North House Folk School: the art of preserving while creating craft

In today’s world of constant and universal connectedness via internet

and smart phones, it’s easy to forget the realities of just a few generations ago. While technology has simplified our lives in many

ways, it also threatens to make certain art forms, and the rich heritage and legacies that go along with them, a thing of the past.

“Not all that long ago, people weren’t getting plastic bowls to eat

their dinner out of from [a store]; they were carving them all by hand because that’s how it was done,” said Greg Wright, executive director of North House Folk School in Grand Marais. “A hundred years ago, if you lived in Scandinavia, if you wanted to go to church on Sunday, how did you get there? On skis you carved yourself.”

Today, if you want to carve your own birch skis, North House is the only school in the country where you could go to learn this craft. It’s one of many art forms that have been drawing students to the folk school since it was founded 13 years ago. Situated on the shore of Lake Superior, North House offers a variety of hands-on programming that includes time-honored crafts ranging from boat building to basketry. Other themes include fiber arts, sausage making, wood carving, music and more.

“We’re a school that’s about doing,” says Wright. “It’s about picking up this rich, dynamic thing called life with both hands, grabbing on to it and creating, doing.”

Open year ‘round, North House offered 350 different classes last year, covering 17 different themes. The most popular courses include traditional timber framing (post and beam construction) and boat building – birch bark canoes, cedar strip canoes and Inuit skin-on-frame kayaks. North House is

also sought by those wanting to learn how to build a wood-fired oven, and those who want to master the art of baking in one.

While most students come from Minnesota, nearly a third travel greater

distances. North House has hosted students from 36 states and three other countries, many of whom have heard of the school simply by word of mouth.

Likewise, while roughly 35-percent of North House’s 130 instructors come from the Grand Marais area, some of the artists have come from as far away as Siberia and the Arctic. According to Wright, that’s necessary for accuracy and authenticity.

“I don’t know how else you’re going to do it,” Wright said. “Sure you can find someone who knows how to work soap stone. But part of the craft is having seen the polar bear or the seal on the ice that you’re trying to

capture through the art work, so we don’t have a choice, especially if we

think that story needs to be told in its truest sense.”

With most courses spanning a weekend, North House has become a vacation destination for many. “They come here to be refreshed, inspired, and often to learn a specific craft,” said Wright. “They want to leave with a kayak. They want to leave having learned how to make Scandinavian green wood-carved bowls.”

But a visit to North House teaches more than just a time-honored craft. Wright says an equally important lesson comes from the interaction with fellow students and instructors. “The whole folk school philosophy resonates around the idea that communities are dynamic places that deepen as they learn together, as they experience the journey of life together.

“It’s not about retreating to the past at all,” said Wright. “It’s about finding inspiration and kindling it anew today to enjoy for yourself as an individual or as something to share.”

North House is a non-profit, with a mission of enriching lives and inspiring hands, hearts and minds. Their success, according to Wright is the result of big dreams, hard work and lots of luck.

“The energies and synergies that came to create North House are really nothing short of magical,” said Wright. It’s almost impossible to believe that a little school like this in the middle of nowhere, at least to most

people in the United States, could not just exist but be thriving, be growing every year – impossible to believe.”

Tags: ln travel, livingnorth