Home Lifestyle Art/Photography Inspiring Natures: Artists on the Gunflint Trail
Inspiring Natures: Artists on the Gunflint Trail
by John Henricksson
Nace Hagemann
Artist Carol Stockman's pine-needle weaving creates naturally beautiful baskets and ornaments, sometimes accented with deer antlers.
The scenic Gunflint Trail in northeastern Minnesota offers some of the most rugged relief within the 695-square-mile Superior National Forest.
Cliffs and ridges top 2,000 feet above sea level (Eagle Mountain, a few miles off the Trail, is the state's highest point). Outcrops of the 2.7 billion-year-old Canadian Shield testify to centuries of volcanic activity and erosion. The hundreds of lakes and streams surrounding the Trail formed from prehistoric glacial meltwaters and ice blocks. And the woods here expand into what ecologist Miron "Bud" Hinselman called "the largest uninterrupted virgin forest in the eastern United States." If inspiring nature is what your art requires, this land provides abundant inspiration.
The Gunflint Trail, thanks in part to the 1999 Storm of the Century that blew down 25 million trees in the national forest, is a virtual art shop for the nature inspired.
Spruce, cedar, pine, birch, maple and poplar can be found strewn near the Trail. Animal hides or the root structure and boles of trees may find their way into art pieces.
Diamond willow, whose location carvers jealously guard, can become hiking staffs, picture frames, decorative items and furniture. White pine is used for its strength, birch and maple for workability and beautiful grains.
For some artists, hanging out in nature goes beyond material gathering. Nature speaks to them.
"If there was not this spiritual connection that results in this communication with the environment," says Iron Lake woodcarver Tom Hayden, "then perhaps similar work could be done in any basement workshop in Minneapolis. But it isn't, because the inspiration and message here are unique."
Sharlene LeTourneau, a docent at the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center near the end of the Gunflint Trail, gives a good example of nature as muse. Discussing a piece of Gunflint art in the center with a visitor, Sharlene inquired, "Are you an artist?"
The woman smiled. "Only when I am up here."
Up here, along the Gunflint Trail, nearly two dozen artists and artisans ply their crafts. I've chosen five of my favorites, representing values indigenous to this area of great natural beauty. Let me introduce you to them.
Carol Stockman edges an antler handle with red-pine needles.
The pine-needle weaver
An artist with infinite patience, Carol Stockman of Voyageur Point on Poplar Lake, weaves red-pine needles into exquisite jewelry boxes, vases and bowls.
She sums up herself and her work as "a little old Norwegian/ Polish woman sitting under a red pine tree on the Gunflint Trail weaving her baskets."
I find Carol's work remarkable.
Using only pine needles and artificial sinew, her boxes and vases are so exquisite they stay only briefly on the shelves at Chik-Wauk's store.
The history of making containers of needles is vague. There are stories of southern Native American women who crafted the 10-inch loblolly pine needles into boxes. Carol says most weavers develop their own skills, self taught through hours of practice.
Similar to the loblolly, red pines produce needles that measure 4 to 7 inches, plenty long for weaving. In winter, the Stockmans live in Gulf Shores, Alabama, near large stands of loblolly pine of which Carol takes advantage. But summers on the Gunflint Trail, she turns to the red pine in her yard. She gathers the brown needles from around their cabin, then thoroughly cleans them. Any rare green ones get stored in the dark to retain their color.
A retired teacher from the Coon Rapids school system, Carol believes the folk arts should be taught and eagerly shares her skill and enthusiasm for basketry with neighbors and guests. She prefers intimate classes of four, but has taught larger groups at Loon Lake Lodge.
When I visited, I watched as she drilled tiny holes around the edge of a 6-inch-long slice of deer antler for a jewelry-box handle. She next edged the handle with a "rope" of red-pine needles made by stuffing them into a soda straw, placing it along the edge of the handle and gradually pulling the straw up the edge, lacing the first needles to the antler with sinew worked through holes she's drilled and adding more needles every inch or so.
At the end, the handle presented a soft edge of tightly wrapped needles.
To finish, Carol applies wax, varnish or a poly spray to preserve her creations, miraculously formed from the red pine's delicate offering.
Larry Shei makes keepsake boxes that echo his Scandinavian heritage.
The box maker
At his home on Loon Lake, Larry Shei expresses his artistic soul through wood – from outdoor furniture to Scandinavian tine boxes to tiny Christmas moose ornaments.
But it was the traditional art of the tine boxes that most fascinated me on a visit to his studio. Tine, pronounced "tee'nah," a Norwegian word meaning kit box. There is also a Swedish version for these traditional bentwood boxes called "svepask."
Remnants of tine boxes have been found in the scuttled wreckage of Viking longboats dating from 840 A.D. The steamed wood boxes, usually of birch, maple, cherry, or white oak for its color and grain, are formed in an oval shape with handles. They were part of every Norwegian household in the old country, brought to the New World in the family luggage.
I suspect they were originally recipe or jewelry boxes, but evolved larger for all family valuables. Brides-to-be kept a tine box for wedding finery and married-life valuables, similar to the traditional hope chest.
Several Norwegian families in Minnesota still treasure their tine boxes, handed down through generations … or crafted by Larry.
Larry, of Norwegian heritage, made his first tine box when he moved north from Montevideo 20 years ago.
The sides of his boxes are 1/8-inch steamed birch gathered locally, and the base is from blowdown white pine. The crafted handles usually reflect the owner. The box Larry made for his wife, Sue (also Norwegian), has the traditional Viking ship prow. For his son, Jon, a fishing guide, Larry carved jumping fish for the handles.
Perusing the many fascinating pieces in Larry's workshop, I spot a tiny container about 2 inches high with carved spire top and scalloped edge. I asked Larry its purpose.
"Oh, I don't know," he responded. "I just found this little piece of wood on the shop floor and made this box out of it."
Ah, the difference between a woodworker and an artist. One uses wood like a tool, the other can visualize magical allure in a hunk of wood discarded on the floor.
Carving gives Tom Hayden an outlet for his dexterity and an avocation that improves with time.
The woodcarver
When Tom Hayden graduated from Hamline University in 1968, he searched for an avocation that would use his natural manual dexterity, balance his intellectual life and might improve over the years. Woodcarving seemed to fit the bill, and he began to take the appropriate community education courses in St. Paul.
Soon he bought his first set of 20 gouges and set about practicing his new craft. He also bought special sharpening stones, called Arkansas 1, 2 and 3, to keep the gouges razor-sharp.
Eventually Tom's life drew him north to a cabin on Iron Lake, where he shapes beautiful birch and maple into lamps, weather-resistant cedar into outdoor cabin signs and bird feeders, and soft butternut into intricate floral boxtop carvings.
On my visit, I asked how the perky brown-eyed Susans growing along Iron Lake Road inspire the intricate flowering plants carved into the recipe box he is making. It begins, Tom told me, with the flowers, of course, and then with photos taken of the plant from several angles. Next Tom traces the photo through carbon paper onto the wood. The artistic process of "chip carving" notches the carbon-traced flower into the wood.
For woodcarvers, razor-sharp gouges and steady hands mean everything. Every few cuts, Tom re-sharpens his gouge on a heavy leather strop soaked in olive oil and coated with powdered pumice.
As the carving progresses, Tom grows more in touch with the spirit of the wood. For him, each piece of wood expresses its own language and personality. It will speak to the carver who can listen and extract the true spirit from the wood.
Tom's cabin is replete with his stunning art: lamps, tabletops, chairs and decorative work. He plans next to carve a human figure, taking special care on the facial expression and the shading and nuance of the eyes, which, he confessed, are "much easier to paint than to carve."
He's starting first with gnomes to populate a children's village and with little figurine wine-bottle stoppers.
Tom's not concerned about working up to his goal of an accurate carving of a person. He well knows that perfect skills take years of practice and at least a woodbox full of patience.
The painter-potter
Carol Miller finds living in a "cabin in the clouds" lets her mind wander and sparks her choices for the colors of the glazes she applies to her outstanding pottery. The breathtaking beauty of her hilltop aerie high above the narrows between Magnetic and Gunflint Lakes and the surrounding wilderness of the boreal forest relaxes her mind, setting it free to wander over the infinite shades and tints that envelop the world around her.
To celebrate this vista, she has replicated five glaze colors she feels dominate the Gunflint Trail scene: Deep Water Blue, Gunflint Iron, Golden Sand, Woodland Green and Autumn Wood. She's featured these colors, too, on greeting cards.
Carol Miller gets inspired at her "cabin in the clouds" while her pottery glaze colors reflect earthier tones
Recreating natural beauty can be a challenge, though. Her Deep Water Blue proved troublesome because water's color varies as its depth increases. It took time to create an intense, vibrant blue just right to echo these depths.
For her Gunflint Iron, she was inspired by the natural iron ore discovered in this area in the 1880s. Its beautiful reddish brown adds a tasteful, muted beauty to lakeshore rocks and paths.
On my visit, I asked Carol to name the most important talents that a potter brings to the whirling wheel. Without hesitation, she responds: "Compression and centering."
"You must keep the object in the exact center of the wheel, otherwise it will be lopsided, and 'compression' because each hand must exert the identical pressure as you caress the vase, or whatever you are making. The exciting part is feeling the life in the clay as you mold it."
Carol winters in Tremont, Illinois, tending to her marketing for clients in the Peoria/Chicago area. Summers she reserves for her cabin and the captivating colors found there.
"The colors and images of the Gunflint Trail," she says, "are reflected in each piece I make."
David Seaton plays his own kind of music on his own kind of guitar, ones he makes with a hole in the top so the musician can better hear the sound. David sells his guitars direct to buyers.
The luthier
It's a little hard to wrap your mind around the job of wilderness canoe outfitter-slash-fine guitar maker, but that's the career of David Seaton.
North House Folk School's staff directory lists David as a "luthier" who "built his first guitar at age 14 and has traveled as far as Colorado and Israel to study the craft, which has led him into new and innovative ways to construct the instrument, create new sounds and expand on the current voice of the guitar."
But there's more. David co-owns Hungry Jack Canoe Outfitters on Hungry Jack Lake with his wife, Nancy Hemstad Seaton, also an artist.
Talking guitar-making with David means learning the desired properties of local woods, like the long fibers of the black spruce, common in the Gunflint forest. This wood best suits the front of a guitar, David feels, because it has the "highest modulus of elasticity" – essentially the wood's good weight-to-stiffness ratio that lets it carry vibrations well and allows proper resonance. David usually backs his guitars with white pine, but the special order guitar he was crafting on my visit was backed in handsome bird's-eye poplar.
Fine old cellos and violas use poplar backs, David says, though many musicians prefer the finished beauty of maple.
David mainly gathers wood from the abundant 1999 blowdown trees in the forest around him. Finding just the right piece of wood for each guitar, he believes, can create an instrument that makes each player's music a little better.
It takes about 50 hours to complete a guitar. Almost all of David's guitars are tailor-made for specific players. David does all the designing in his head before starting, with each guitar influenced by the wood. Each is perfected with his 20 years of experience.
Asked about his design goals, David speaks enthusiastically about making ergonomic guitars comfortable to hold. The instrument must live easily in the player's hands, David asserts. He refines his guitars through several "fittings" with the musician before completion.
David's own guitar has the sound port or "hole," on the up-side, rather than the familiar center front, so the player can better hear the sound. All the trim on his guitar is birch, with the tuning knobs and string saddle made of deer antler.
Turns out guitar making and canoe outfitting are a good career marriage. While outfitting takes up his spring, summer and fall, winter leaves long, ice-bound weeks free for making guitars in his cozy, woodstove-heated workshop.
What could be more natural than a life filled with music and wilderness?
For David, and for all these artists, the road to inspiration lies along a wild Gunflint Trail.
Author John Henricksson spends five months a year on his beloved Gunflint Trail. You can find these artists' work at Chik-Wauk Museum store.
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