I had a great weekend at the Grand Marais Art Colony. We went up for GAWD – Girls Art and Wine Day only this was more like Girls Art and Wine Weekend. We took a two day 3-D stained glass workshop. Our instructor was fabulous and even my unskilled hands were able to accomplish two pieces!A little scary at first, 3D glass work is taking sheets and pieces of colored glass, cutting them, breaking them, grinding them, foiling them and then soldering them together. Lots of tool use, machine use, times when a person could have dramatic glass breaking experiences and lots of time holding a soldering iron that is around 800 degrees – I had my work cut out for me in the way of learning.
Our first piece was an icosahedron. An icosahedron (I-co-suh-hee-dron) is a twenty sided 3D object consisting of triangles. See! Look how much smarter I am! To me, it looks like a homemade Christmas ornament. You have to have the triangles just about perfect in order to fit it together. Seeing as how my patience has a timeframe and I could have grinded the triangles to nothing in the pursuit of perfection, my icosahedron fit together “fine enough.” Fine enough works for me. “We” (actually Don – the instructor) closed in the gaps and there were only two so I felt successful.
After the icosahedron we did a free form piece. I think that was the most fun. Instead of following a program we just got to make something. I couldn’t think of anything so I made nothing until nothing looked like something. I think it looks like a palm tree but everyone kept asking if it was a bird.
My glass forms are definitely getting hung up. A girl can’t spend two days on all those machines, working with all those tools and not display the product. Besides that, attaching the wires to hang them up was a frustrating experience. I spent the time doing it, I'm going to hang them. It's kind of like taking a lot of time on a big dinner that turns out not as good as you wanted. You eat it anyway because you spent the time doing it.I’ve never stayed in Grand Marais, I’ve passed through and I’ve eaten at Sven and Ole’s, but that’s it. Grand Marais is a fabulous town! Very green, very friendly, to me it had a hippie small town feel, kind of like Boulder only not commercialized in the slightest and no college kids getting stoned at the bus stop.
My trip started a off a little rough – I guess maybe because it was Friday the 13th. I planned to make bread for everyone for the weekend. I was going to make 3 loaves. Well, I only had time for two, I starved my sourdough starter to death so I need to make that again (takes about a week) and my banana-cranberry-pecan bread was a little too liquidy and was burned on the outside while still mush on the inside. So much for thinking I had mastered the art of bread making. It seems to kind of be like riding horses. Five steps forward, two steps back.
Thank goodness for the breadsmith.
While I was killing sourdough bread starter and making liquid burnt banana bread I was also doing a horrible job of packing. I have luggage, it's good luggage. But I chose to use a backpack, a duffle and a paper grocery bag. I do not know why I made that choice other than Melissa told me she had plenty of room in her car - apparently that translated to me as 'pack awkward luggage and bring several losable loose items.'
I got stuck in traffic on the way to Melissa's. I also forgot to get wine. We haphazardly packed the car, got wine and got on the road. The trip went fine until after we got out of Duluth. Then it started to snow. We couldn't see the road, it was a toss up between regular lights or brights, both caused problems. I was feeding Melissa dark chocolate to keep the spirits up and she stopped twice for me to get out and smoke. I have never heard Melissa say thanks and praise to God but she did when we drove into Grand Marais.
So it took us just about 6 1/2 hours to get there. There was wine waiting for us when we got there and then everything was all better.We rented a house with the rest of the "GAWDesses," called the Antler Inn. It is right next door to the Art Colony studio and about three blocks from the lake. The owner was a honey. She even gave me some of her potato bread starter and a couple of recipes to try with it. Super nice of her and she had a great attention to hospitality and detail. The house was fully stocked with books and movies and the rooms, linens and beds were all very comfortable. I love the way she decorated it and I love the use of Christmas lights. Even the tap water tasted good. It was warm and cozy, I was instantly relaxed at home. It was a 6 bedroom, 3 bathroom house so we had plenty of space!
The kitchen was fully stocked, I even could have made bread. That's where we ate breakfast and we ended up eating out for lunch and dinner. I ate very well this weekend – 100% off the diet. I absolutley love duck.
Wine flowed freely starting at about 4ish every day. Normally it is in the spirit of GAWD to sip wine whilst working away at projects. However all of the tools, combined with glass and a general interest in actually finishing a project - we waited until after 4:00.
The house had a cat that we welcomed to have around. He was a good cat and very easy to be around. But cats have this weird way of making noise to get your attention and every cat is unique in the way they do this. This one bangs drawer handles at three o’clock in the morning. Oh well, I guess he was just being a cat.
The conversations were great, I got to meet new people that I’d love to see again. We talked about everything from jewelry making to rodeo to witnessing bad Valentine’s Day dates. That is a whole other topic some other day.
I did my part to stimulate the economy, broke my rule about no more cook books and I can say that there is nothing I would change about the weekend. I left my computer at home and we walked everywhere so I didn’t have to get into a car at all.
It was a weekend of good company, food, art and wine. Nothing beats it.
