Ellendale, ND

Annual Do & Discover set for July 31, 10 am - 3:30 pm at the Dickey County Fairgrounds on Historic US Hwy. 281This year’s Do & Discover, July 31st, offers a wide variety of activities. Please take a look at the article below for more information, and we hope to see you there.

‘Do and Discover’ offers new eventsThis will be the third year for the Ellendale Area Arts Council’s event, “Do and Discover.”Each year it grows and gets better,” said Event Chairwoman Lana Schlecht.  “We try to improve the line-up of events and include new ones each time.”  New events this year are Kay Werre and Justin Meidinger presenting old time fiddle music and Doug and Gloria Woodring teaching everyone how to make a rope that they can take home. Cowboy Paul Veland will teach roping skills, and a shepherdess and spinner, Kelly Knispel from Groton, will demonstrate her craft. Elise Hess, recently featured in the Aberdeen American News for her Legos building skill, will be in charge of a contest for area Legos aficionados. She will also make Legos trophies for the winning participants. The Dakotah Territory Muzzle Loaders will be here again to allow participants to shoot black powder guns, throw tomahawks and do archery. They will cook over open fires and shoot off a candy cannon as well as make fry bread for snacks. Tim and Joanne Geinert, Nortonville, will bring in a gas-powered ice cream maker and will provide delicious homemade ice cream for the crowd. Local resident Garry Mertz will offer horse-drawn wagon rides.Photographer and ND Artist in Residence Roddy MacInnes is coming to Ellendale from Colorado to show attendees “Cell Phone Art.”The event is scheduled for the Dickey County Fairgrounds, July 31, 10 am – 3:30 pm.Admission for the day is $4/person (this includes lunch and all the activities listed), or $20 per family.

During the first two weeks of the exhibit, the opera house has opened its doors to dozens of school kids from throughout the region. Those who were lucky received a tour of the upstairs part of the building from our neighbor and O.P.E.R.A. board member, Grant. Many of the young people were unaware of this lovely resource on Main Street, and I believe that they will have more interest in getting it completed after seeing the possiblities!

They learned about the hard work volunteers contributed to restoring the Lobby that is currently open - re-installing original flooring and ceiling tiles and then adding modern amenities such as handicap-accessible restrooms, lighting, heat and air conditioning. This newly opened part of the building sure gets a lot of use: parties, meetings and numerous art and history exhibits. 

Don’t miss the opportunity to visit Journey Stories before the exhibit leaves North Dakota. It closes in Ellendale on March 14.

Last night was the gala to celebrate the grand opening of the Smithsonian Institution’s Journey Stories exhibit at the opera house in Ellendale. We put on our finest and enjoyed hors d’oeuvres and music at Trinity Bible College’s Student Life Center. What a lovely venue! Despite the weather, we had nice turnout, with the award for longest travel going to Tom from Fargo. So today begins our regular schedule of tours, with training to be held on Saturday. I hope you will try to make it down (or up) here between now and March 14 to see it.

social-media-conference.pdf

I had the opportunity to speak at the Social Media Conference which was held at NDSU in October. The topic covered was blogging as a communication tool for rural communities. Follow the link to see the presentation.

The Prairie Rose 4-H Club enjoyed a beautiful October day at Johnson’s Gulch. This is a wildlife management area located west of Frobes ND.  The scenery was amazing as usual. We practice some photography, pressed flowers, learned about biofuels and geocached.  It was a great day

The most recent North Dakota Museum of Art exhibit, Animals: Them and Us opens Tuesday, November 10, at the historic Ellendale opera house and runs through Sunday, November 29. ND Museum of Art Director Laurel Reuter has gathered the work of twenty artists from across North and South America in a contemporary exhibition that is touring the State. Works in the exhibition include five videos, numerous paintings and photographs, plus sculpture. The biological definition of animal refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, including humans who are only one of the nine or ten million species of animals that inhabit planet Earth. In curating the exhibition, Reuter searched for art from the complicated animal genre that exhibits contrasting and conflicting visions, points-of-view, assumptions, assertions, and historical remembrances of other members of the kingdom Animalia. There are historical ways of thinking about animals. Henry Horenstein, a photographer from Boston, has a photograph in the exhibition that was part of his 2008 solo exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. It was part of a series designed as “lessons in looking.” According to Elisabeth Werby, Director of the Harvard Museum, Horenstein’s work continues a centuries-old tradition of natural history illustration. In such work, “Animals are often presented in shallow space with limited landscape, sometimes even against a blank page, in order to promote close examination and study of detail.” Other artists create art directly from their own relationships with animals; chief among them is Guillermo Hart. His family owns an estancia encompassing thousands of hectors of land in the far south of Patagonia, Argentina. Even while completing his graduate work in photography at the Massachusetts College of Art, Hart would return to the family ranch to work and to photograph. His photographs tell the story of Argentine ranching where the stomachs of cattle are dried on fences for the cheese industry, hundreds of hare pelts are placed on racks to cure for the fur trade, and the interior of the veterinarian’s office is hung with Argentinean hunting trophies and a two-headed calf.Artists in Animals: Them and Us:
Cecelia Condit, Milwaukee, Wisconsin • Guillermo Hart, Buenos Aries, Argentina • Chris Pancoe , Winnipeg, Manitoba • Stuart Klipper, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Kim Bromley, Fargo, North Dakota • Henry Horenstein, Boston, Massachusetts • Ingrid Restemayer, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Vance Gellert, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Kate Javens, New York, New York • Terry Evans, Chicago, Illinois • David Madzo, St. Paul, Minnesota • Frank Kelley, Grand Forks, North Dakota • Barton Benes, New York, New York • Susana Jacobson, Salt Lake City, Utah • Lynn Geesaman, Minneapolis, Minnesota • Thomas Allen, Coloma, Michigan • Roberta Paul, Newtonville, Massachusetts • Mary Lucier, New York, New York • Catherine Chalmers, New York, New York Mary • Sprague, St. Louis, MissouriThe exhibit will be open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 11 am – 5 pm, and Sunday, 1-4 pm. If you are not able to attend at one of these times or would like a larger group tour, please call Ken at 349-2490 or Patricia at 349-2916.To accompany the exhibit, Ellendale welcomes Sculptor Guillermo “Memo” Guardia. He will help students make a piece that includes hand building in wet clay, drying, bisque, glazing and raku firing during the week of November 16-20.The events are sponsored by the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Ellendale Area Arts Council, Ellendale Tourism and O.P.E.R.A., Inc. For more information, visit www.ellendalend.com.

I have to rave about the first annual Fabric & Fiber Festival that we held on the weekend. What a lovely sight: hundreds of quilts draped over the pews at the Nazarene Church and hanging from racks, chairs and tables. What great stories we heard, too. The event fit so well with the “Journey Stories” theme of this year’s tourism campaign. Our speakers, Dr. Ann Braaten and Dr. Birgit Hans, impressed us with the tales of their research into fabrics, shawls and quilts. The Ellendale and Aberdeen quilt clubs’ presentations were awesome! Each lady shared the stories of the quilts she brought to the festival. Our vendors from Oakes and Aberdeen offered hundreds of fabrics, kits and books. Although the busyness of everyone’s September weekend prevented a greater turnout, I am confident that the event will grow each year. I will post some pix of the event as soon as I have a chance. I hope to see some of you next year, the first weekend of October.

       October 4-10 is National 4-H Week. Dickey County is the home to 7 4-H Clubs and approximately 100 4-H members. We are so fortunate to have  an amazing group of youth who do wonderful things in their community. They are curious and anxious to learn new life skills. Please remember the local 4-H members this week and the positive impact youth have on your community.    http://4-h.org/4hstory.html

Country Night has been rescheduled to Saturday, April 4th, same time, same location. Unfortunately, many of our neighbors are still having problems from the flooding and electricity outages. I hope you can be there on the 4th!

We are also rescheduling the woodcut exhibit and class but will have to wait to hear from the artist on a future date.