The Family *roll

Emily reads the tiny history of Tiny Shanty

Man I love this state. Yesterday, Emily, Dan H., Eleanor, Leo and I headed west of the Cities to Medicine Lake, the site of Art Shanty 2010:

“A four-weekend exhibition of performance, architecture, science, art, video, literature, survivalism and karaoke, ASP is part sculpture park, part artist residency and part social experiment, inspired by traditional ice fishing houses that dot the state’s lakes in winter.”

We walked out on the lake (the ice is about 24″ thick) toward a group of shanties, following a large Groundhog that was making its way toward a large Polar Bear (?), who was getting ready to distribute free cakes to the winners of a modified form of musical chairs. No cake for us I’m afraid. Undeterred, we made the rounds, visiting each shanty in turn, including the Tiny Shanty, the FantaShanty (complete with a taxidermied baby dear), the Black Bania (complete with a 97 degree sauna), and The Guerilla Shanty (where visitors were asked to teach the occupants something. Dan H.’s lesson, “If people tell you their baby is sleeping through the night, they’re lying.”) My favorite shanty, however,  was Dance Shanty wherein people simply danced. The best part of Dance Shanty was that whenever someone opened the door to come in everyone would go “Yay!” as though they had been waiting for you. That really cracked me up.

In an impressive display of Minnesota parenting, Dan H. fed Leo on the ice in sub-freezing temperatures:

We left our own mark at Art Shanty. Leo and Eleanor need to get married so we can pull this picture out at their wedding (look carefully now):

I was pleased as punch by the everything to that point. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to learn that they were selling hotdogs. My day was complete:

Self-portrait with hotdog

And so was Eleanor’s and Leo’s:

Art Shanty!