10 Questions About…

Art Shanties

March 21, 2009 11:48 pm

The Art Shanties are ice fishing houses on Medicine Lake. Each shanty chooses a theme and does theitr best to decorate the ice fishing house based on that theme.

So we’re city kids. Walking out on a frozen lake is always a big thrill for us. Seeing houses on the lake is an even bigger thrill. Did you know that there is about 2 feet of ice on the lake , even near the shore? We got to peek into some of the holes cut into the ice for fishing and it was pretty cool. OK, I don’t’ think most people out here were fishing but it was cool to see anyways.

We visited most of the shanties. Here are the themes we remember:

Mapping – we were able to track our house on their map and to check out several maps they had posted and/or created for the event. They gathered different info on visitors each week – based on their home location.

Submarine – looked like a submarine inside – kinda cool

3 Story House – yup you could climb up 3 stories in this house. It looked like a periscope from the outside.

Kites – the girls got to make a kite in one house and then fly it! We went on a beautiful day so it was fun to see the kits in the air. Plus this was a popular shanty and with dumb luck on our side our timing was perfect to go in and create without waiting. The artist’s name was Plunkett – and I don’t think he belived me when I said we had seen Sir Oliver Plunkett’s head in a jar in Drogheda.

Words – this shanty has a bring-and-take library. Also they had a list of words that are in danger of being made extinct and they asked each visitor to adopt a word to try to bring it back to life. I chose latibule. Probably most of you know it – it means a hiding place. As in, get out of that latibule kid, it’s mine. I encourage you to use it often.

Paper shanty – made entirely of paper – well a lot of industrial looking tubes – but it was cool.

Dice – there were a bunch of little shanties that looked like dice and they had games inside that you could play. We played a minute of boggle. It was super warm and cozy in the die!

Admundson – Admundson was an explorer. He and his crew went to the Antartic in about 1911. There was a shipwreck and they got stuck in the ice. So a contingency went to the whaling station to get help while 20 men were left behind. This shanty was a replica of station they left behind.

Confessional – It looked like a church. You could write down your confessional admissions. It reminded me of the exhibit at the Minneapolis Public Library last summer – except that these admission were pretty family-friendly.

Radio – one shanty broadband a radio station. How cool is that?