MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Saturday was cold even for Minneapolis, but that didn’t stop thousands of people from taking to a frozen lake to immerse themselves in art, make new friends — and do their best to stay warm to stay.
The annual Art Shanty Projects drew audiences to Lake Harriet for the first of four weekends of interactive, often silly and sometimes downright strange art events. The art was presented in or near slums, a repurposing of the shelters often seen on Minnesota lakes for hardy souls who ice fish in the frigid depths of winter.
Minnesotans are passionate about water and view the state’s thousands of lakes as public spaces to enjoy, even during winters that would keep people deep under the covers elsewhere, said Erin Lavelle, the organization’s artistic director.
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“In the summer you see people in boats and swimming, in canoes and kayaks. And in the winter you see people on the frozen lakes,” Lavelle said. “So they’re biking and skiing and skating and ice fishing, and we just happen to be making art on the frozen lake.”
In the 21 years the event has been held, Lavelle said it has been curtailed a few times by warm winters, but never because it was too cold. Temperatures were not expected to rise above the single digits this weekend.
That cold has frozen the lake’s surface to a depth of just over 33 centimeters – thick enough to support the commotion on the ice above.
This year’s projects include a number of extensive and innovative exhibitions, such as a knitting pavilion in which visitors weave hand-dyed yarn into panels to complete the roof and walls; a three-ring circus with music, poetry and clowning; a cat world where people can be turned into felines; dancing in a “Disco Inferno Hot Box”; and a film studio where people make their own short films.
In addition, there are singing and theater opportunities, ice cycling and painting in the open air.
While Minnesotans take pride in getting outside even in the snow and cold, Lavelle says the event’s surveys show that doing so affects 10% to 25% of the approximately 25,000 people who typically attend the four-hour event. weekends, the first time they are on a frozen lake.
“Making people feel connected to friends, strangers and winter is the best thing we can do,” Lavelle said. “We just want to be a social place where the public can go and feel like they are part of something bigger.”