Spotlight

“Feathers” by Adam Turman is a four-color screen print, including metallic silver. | ADAM TURMAN

Autumn Art

By Breana Roy

No one can deny the beauty of autumn with its colorful array of orange, red and yellow hues. Sadly, the colors of autumn are fleeting compared to our summers and winters. Here’s a few art pieces to keep the season going.

“Red Fox Gaze” is an acrylic on canvas piece by Duluth artist Alexa Carson. | ALEXA CARSON

This acrylic piece by Anna Hess is titled “Red Fall Moose.” | ANNA HESS

“Rhythm of Fall” is a new painting by Duluth artist Aaron Kloss. He has been painting fulltime for 10 years now. | AARON KLOSS

This watercolor piece, titled “Fall Colour,” is by Thunder Bay artist Biljana Baker. | BILJANA BAKER

This new bead embroidery on felted wool piece by Jo Wood is titled “Full Color #3.” | JO WOOD

A Dala a Day with Teri Glembin

CREATIVE SPACE: By Rae Poynter

When the pandemic lockdowns began, the extra time spent at home led many to take up new, socially-distanced pastimes, from bread baking to home improvement projects. For Duluth artist Teri Glembin, lockdown was the impetus for drawing a new Swedish Dala horse each day for a month, a pastime that evolved into a captivating project with over 30 designs.

In addition to drawing, Teri Glembin also does wood burning. She gets recycled wood cut into Dala shapes to wood burn and embellish her designs on them with oil-based paint markers. | SUBMITTED

Art has long been a part of Glembin’s life. She began drawing at a young age, and graduated from the University of Minnesota-Duluth with a degree in Art and a minor in Art History. She went on to work in commercial art, graphic design, and marketing, but always continued doing her own art on the side.

“Creating works of art for me has always been life enrichment,” Glembin said.

Fast forward to Christmas of 2019, when her parents gifted her a huge set of Sharpie markers. Little did she know at the time that these markers would be put to good use once the pandemic hit in 2020, and “A Dala a Day” was born. When the stay-athome orders came in March, Glembin began drawing a new Dala horse each day, something she kept up through April. She described her process as “couch-crafting,” often with her border collie by her side.

“It was nice to come home from work and stay positive by doing something creative,” Glembin said. “It was soothing and mesmerizing, and I liked having the Dala shape as a template to doodle inside. The process was very organic—it’s all hand-illustrated and not perfect.”

For Glembin, illustrating and painting Dala horses has been a way to connect with her Scandinavian heritage and traditions. | SUBMITTED

Dala horses come from the Dalarna region of Sweden, and are traditionally carved by hand before being decoratively painted, most often with a floral saddle. (The signature red-orange color of Dala horses comes from the pigments of copper mines in the region.) When Swedish immigrants arrived in Minnesota they brought the folk craft with them, and Dala horse statues can be found in several towns throughout the state. For Glembin, illustrating and painting Dala horses has been a way to connect with her Scandinavian heritage and traditions. And while some of her designs are Scandinavian-inspired, she also finds inspiration from her day-to-day life.

“I find inspiration everywhere,” Glembin said. “Sometimes I’ll notice an interesting pattern in the beach sand or driftwood, on wallpaper, or on someone’s purse. My Dala designs incorporate my interpretations of the Zentangle® method, Mandala symbols, Marimekko prints, and illustrated floral designs—which I now tag as my #teritangles and #bloominartstudio. I like to play with different color combinations and put my own twist on them.”

Glembin ended up creating 31 unique Dala drawings, and shared each new design on social media to connect others with her art during the pandemic. Since then, her Dalas have gone from the living room couch to being virtually displayed at The Nordic Center in Duluth in January 2021. Glembin has also created Dala greeting cards with her designs, as well as a coloring book for those who wish to try their own hand at Dala doodling.

During the pandemic, Glembin created 31 unique Dala drawings. Her work was on display at the Nordic Center in Duluth in January. | SUBMITTED

In addition to drawing, Glembin also does wood burning. She gets recycled wood cut into Dala shapes to wood burn and embellish her designs on them with oil-based paint markers. Other wood burned projects that Glembin creates include jewelry, ornaments, and shelf or wall artwork.

Teri Glembin’s artwork can be found around Duluth, including the Art Dock and Lizzard’s Art Gallery & Framing. Stop by the Duluth Folk School’s Dovetail Cafe & Marketplace to view an exhibit of her “A Dala a Day” originals this October. Find her artwork online at: bloominartstudio.com.

When People Think About Craft...

Behind the Craft: By Kim Ode

When we think about craft, our thoughts may drift toward pursuits that are artistic, inventive and laborious. Think of turning a tree into a basket or a bowl or a building bound with pegs; a sheep’s wool into a rug or a pouch or a patterned pair of mittens; a bar of iron into an ornate gate, a practical grate or a useful knife.

Such manual skills were honed over generations, first passed along as practical, and often crucial, knowledge before mechanization nudged such work into the realm of reverence for tradition. For better or worse, we now tend to place craft on a beautiful handmade shelf. We honor its artisans, all the while feeling a quiet relief that our daily lives do not depend on being so skilled.

Published cookbook author and lead foods instructor Kim Ode teachings classes at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais. | SUBMITTED

Yet: Consider the biscuit.

A mixture of flour, baking powder, salt, and a smidge of sugar is tossed with cubes of cold butter, bound with milk (ideally buttermilk), then rolled and folded and rolled and folded to create layers that separate and rise in a hot oven.

The result is an ethereally tender stack of buttery leaves with just enough of a golden edge to hold up under jam, or gravy, or more butter.

This, too, is the result of craft honed over the years. Early biscuits were hard and stodgy lumps of flour and water stored in barrels and meant to last over sailing ships’ long journeys. Early settlers in New World colonies could bake each day and improved on the texture, first by beating in air, and later by adding leavening agents such as baking powder or baking soda, making biscuits more tender.

Early recipes reflect the importance of a home baker’s familiarity with the process. Flour was measured in handfuls, salt in pinches, butter in knobs, and milk in ladles. Some days, a baker needed to add more flour; on others, more milk until the dough felt “right.”

Then into the oven, where the temperature was gauged by how quickly a toss of flour onto the heated bricks turned a particular shade of brown. Then the biscuits would—wait for it—bake until done.

This process hasn’t changed that much over the years. We can measure more accurately, and heat is more controllable, but the essential craft of making biscuits remains the same.

So why aren’t more people making biscuits on a regular basis? I have several theories.

The craft of baking can get short shrift because it happens in the kitchen, an environment so familiar and mundane that we tend to undervalue the work done there. Plus, the art disappears by the end of the day, consumed with pleasure, but leaving no trace.

There’s also the perplexing contradiction of skill. If someone can make a biscuit, or other baked goods, with confidence, it’s easy for them to shrug off the intricacies. New bakers then wonder why they’re struggling, throw down their aprons, and reach for the tube in the grocery’s refrigerated case.

Then there’s social media, which has created a sort of helpful intimidation. Google “buttermilk biscuits” and “recipes” and you are rewarded with 1,740,000 results. Sheesh.

That’s a huge change from past decades when the only recipe you followed was your mother’s or grandmother’s. We talk about lost generations of bakers who for various reasons never learned at an elder’s elbow. They missed witnessing that moment when butter and sugar are properly creamed, or how to fold beaten egg whites into a batter, much less experience the high-wire act of separating an egg.

No wonder food companies found a ready market for convenience and ease. And, while those refrigerated tubes of dough are pretty amazing as technology, their results will always pale against a hot biscuit baked from scratch.

So, I’m heartened by signs that we’re starting to fold the craft of baking back into our everyday lives.

While refrigerated tubes of dough are pretty amazing as technology, their results will always pale against a hot biscuit baked from scratch. | KIM ODE

Certainly, the pandemic inspired a lot of bored, anxious and hungry people to tackle making bread, to the point where finding yeast became a search worthy of Indiana Jones. Will folks keep baking? Many will, partly because they discovered the economical benefits. But I suspect they also awakened some primordial satisfaction rooted in feeling skilled, creative, practical and focused.

Home baking has gotten a huge boost with the phenomenon of “The Great British Baking Show,” first on public television, and now on Netflix and YouTube. While the challenges can get rather ridiculous, the essential message endures: Baking is a series of basic skills that are mastered with repetition. Plus, you end up, almost always, with something delicious.

In other words, baking—like woodworking, blacksmithing, weaving and more—is a craft, but a craft accomplished from start to finish each day. It feeds your soul, but also your belly.

Its skills are straightforward: Read the recipe before you begin. Read it again. Preheat your oven. Measure carefully. Take your time.

Where to start? Go to: tfrecipes.com/ betty-crocker-biscuits-from-scratch. Here you will find Betty Crocker’s biscuit recipe. There are others, but this one has withstood the test of time, which is what craft is all about.