Art Shanties

A few weeks ago, Jared and I (and Freddie) spent a lovely Sunday afternoon with some friends checking out the Art Shanties on Medicine Lake. I had missed them last year, so I was happy that the day we planned to go was a beautiful sunny day (okay, it was pretty damn cold, but if I remember correctly, it had warmed up to a balmy 15 degrees that afternoon). I had finally figured out how to load my lomo lc-a and was excited to try it out (I was using some crappy, super expired film, but I think the photos came out pretty cool). Here are some of the photos I finally got back from that awesome afternoon. I have tons of photos and I want to share them all, so be sure to check out my flickr set over the next few days as I upload them all.

The Art Shanties is one of those weird, but totally awesome things that is "so Minnesota." The shanties are supposed to be artistic takes on ice fishing shanties (something else I will never understand the excitement about- ice fishing). There was everything from a sauna shanty to a shanty made completely out of paper to a confessional shanty to a three story shanty. One of my favorites (aside from the sauna shanty, obviously) was the set of dice shanties. Each die was a little booth that you could sit in and just hang out and play board games. I mean, who else would build these artsy shanties out on a frozen lake and hang out there for five weekends in a row in the dead of winter?! There was even one shanty that was an overturned boat and was modeled after Shackleton's adventure. There were three women who had built that one and they were actually living there for the entire five weeks and had totally taken on the identities of some of the members of Shackleton's crew. It was crazy! This is why I love Minnesota...crazy awesome nonsense like this.

This was definitely one of my favorite activities this winter (I say that as though winter is over) and I am definitely planning on going back next year...