University Place

I'd like to introduce Lynn Richie, the president of LOLA, Land O' Lakes Artisans, and Wendy Powalisz, the executive director of LOLA. Right, so thank you, Wendy and Lynn. So thank you very much. You've gotta transfer. Thank you, Chris. As Chris said I am Lynn Richie. I happen to have the lucky job of being the president of our board for LOLA. LOLA originally was named Land O'Lakes Area Artisans, Inc., and as we matured we decided that that name really didn't fit us. People got a little confused. We all call ourselves LOLA and that's mostly how people know us. But we have now become Land O'Lakes Arts. Simple, easy. People can understand it. I would like to read our mission to you and then I'm gonna talk a little bit about my background and how I ended up with LOLA and how LOLA actually got started. Our mission is dedicated to promoting the arts in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. LOLA will support local artists in fulfilling their artistic potential while also bringing enrichment, art education and beautification to the people of the area, which contributes to the vitality of the larger community. It's important that we started with a mission statement so we could move forward and continue to remind ourselves how important our mission statement is. I moved to Land O'Lakes from Mercer approximately 11, 12 years ago and in Mercer I was very involved on the Iron County development and Mercer's development group. Mercer's development group started with myself and two other people and grew and became quite a force in the community. It really has done a great deal of education for myself to learn how to be a leader. We worked very hard with the UW. I'm a big proponent of working with the UW. They have all the resources you could ever need or at least direct you in the right way. So I would recommend that no matter what you do, whatever your life experiences become, go ahead and partner with the UW. LOLA started by a small development group that was started in Land O'Lakes. A gentleman on that group said he thought arts was something that we should look into, and he sent a survey out to all of the artists that were listed in the Headwaters Art League in the area, and he got a 100% response for a survey, which is amazing to get 100% response, but we did. And from that they held a meeting and there were over 30-some people of the artists that came to this first meeting and that's where LOLA started. In the very beginning we saw ourselves with artists working and selling their artwork and LOLA teaching art. And when we did our 501(c)(3), we found out that no, we couldn't do that because we would be making, we could not be a non-profit and make so much money from the arts. So we separated and there is Artistree Gallery, totally separate from us, a cooperative gallery of over 30 people that do their artwork. LOLA teaches, and that's our mission, is to teach as I said. We want to educate. We want to beautify. We want to bring vitality to our community. We were lucky enough that people have supported us right from the very beginning, both emotionally, which we need a lot of, and financially. We just recently, a year ago in September, bought the building that we had been renting. Artistree Gallery is in that building and they are a renter of ours now. So that's worked, that's been a great symbiotic relationship because people come in to see the artwork, then all of a sudden they see that they have art classes and they direct them to us and we have people come in that read about our art classes, take art classes and go oh my gosh, this is a gorgeous gallery. We invite all of you to come up and visit us. Please let us know. You can call our phone number. We'll make sure you all get a business card and we'd be glad to give you tours. We love to have people come and see tours of our building. So when we first started we have a variety of board members and that's part of that leadership that when you have, you were talking earlier about how you work with your own core values and yet you need to work with other people. That's a real key component when you have both artist and non-artist working on a board together, because artists, um, are wonderful. (laughs) (audience laughter) Very flighty. Not all of them, but many of them are, and so we have to reign them in. And then we had a bunch of business people. And sometimes business people, you have to remind them what the mission statement is, and that's me. I'm more on the business side. I'm on the development. I like to see that happen. Periodically Wendy will remind me when I come up with this great idea she'll say, "You know, that's really not "our core mission." And go back, read that, and go yeah, that's not, you're right, Wendy. We also in the very beginning did some things like we knew we needed to have a website, so somebody for $125 dollars, we had a Yahoo website. Yeah, we didn't know anything about Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff, but it has become important and we have found, we actually have 42 Instagram followers. We have a 15-year-old doing our Instagram. (audience laughter) -

Voiceover

It's their language. Yeah, exactly. And we now have a Facebook page. We partnered, now this is gonna sound interesting, but we partnered with the University of Louisville. Through networking we partnered with them and they as a class took on LOLA for our website. Because we're a non-profit they were able to do that and we are going to be introducing our new website which is 3000 times better than the one we had. The other one, I used to tell people, okay, you can go to our website, but I'm really sorry. It's really bad. And just, honest, we're getting a new one. Honest, we're getting a new one. And so that will be introduced in February, I believe. So you will be able to look on and see this great new website that we have. We also in the beginning did a strategic plan. We did by-laws. Not only did we do that and a lot of times 501(c)(3)s, you know, it's a little loosey-goosey. We actually review them and make changes. As we grow and change we actually make changes to those. We use Robert's Rules of Orders at our meeting which is also a good thing to have in place. In the very beginning we didn't always do that and sometimes that kind of bit us. And as I said we've worked with the UW. Chris has been invited to come to all of our various meetings, so as many as he can make he comes and he's just there to give us little words of advice and to make sure we're staying true to what we need to do. We use volunteers. I am so happy to see two high school kids involved. When we did the development group in Mercer we had high school kids on our development board. I wish that we could have high school kids on the LOLA board. I'm sure that our meetings just aren't gonna work with high school being as far away as it is. That's gonna take up, our meetings usually run two and a half to three hours and then the travel time wouldn't probably work, but we would love to have that kind of input. Networking, as I said we work with the University of Louisville. We've also worked with the University of Wisconsin out of yeah, Whitewater, through their dance program. The professor of dance there actually has a home in Land O'Lakes and she-- -

Audience Question

(inaudible) - Say again? -

Audience Question

Robin? - No, Barb Grub el. And Barb's family's from Land O'Lakes. She ended up dancing in New York for many, many years. Traveled the world with the Rockefeller Center teaching dance. Moved back to Wisconsin and ended up teaching at Whitewater. She developed a program for us so we had a dance teacher come up in the summer and teach dance to young and old. And then the second year, and that was grant, so we got a grant through the UW for that. The second year we didn't have a grant for Miss Kelly but we had another teacher that did theater. So we, LOLA, paid for Miss Kelly to teach dance and we had a theater program going for the youth. We've done that for five years. This last year we didn't do theater. Next year we're going to try to make sure we get theater back along with dance. It's been a very, very successful. It is great to watch the production at the end. The kids are joyful to watch dance. Along with that networking comes networking with various organizations like Vilas County Development. Like with our other chambers. We are members of not only Land O'Lakes chambers, but Phelps, Conover, Boulder Junction. That's a real key component to network and make sure that everybody knows what you're doing. And we have held events at our business that are really not art-related at all. It was just talking about economic development. And we have found that we are one of the cornerstones in our community for economic development. Who would've thought? But we really are. Wendy and I were recently in a local business, all right, it was a bar, and we were having a cocktail (audience laughter) and the bartender, when we walked in, he goes, "Oh, here comes LOLA" and we didn't even know the bartender. And as we were leaving he said, "You, LOLA, bring so much to the community. "Thank you so much. "You bring so much." I mean, that's from a bartender in a little local bar. We know our patrons. We know that the rug hookers that come every Monday, that the knitters that come every Friday and the watercolorists that come every Wednesday. These are just free. They come in, do they're little programs. How much they appreciate that they have a nice space to be able to be in. Wendy works with homeschoolers. She's gonna tell you all about the various programs we do. But we do try to reach out to the entire communities. We do not think of ourselves as Land O'Lakes. We are area. That's where that first name came in is that we added area to it because we are. We're also a border town so we have Michigan that we help. A lot of the students in the Michigan area as well as the adults. We are not in competition with any other art organization. I don't think any business should ever be in competition with any other like business. You work together. You bring more people in. We are so fortunate with the arts groups throughout our area. Gay Sheffon has coined the phrase "art corridor," and it really is. It starts in Three Lakes and runs all the way up through Eagle River, Land O'Lakes, all the way up into Michigan. And why not? We really should work together. The more there is the more reason people will come to our area. So that's a very, very important thing. Ann Katz this past summer was visiting LOLA and she said, "Are you guys comin' to the "rural development thing that's being held in Mercer?" And we went, huh? And 'cause we're arts. Why would we go to that? And she said, "No, you really need to." So another board member and I went. And as you know Ann is a big personality and is absolutely wonderful to have around. Mary and I walked in and Ann announced very loudly, "Thank goodness the arts are here." (audience laughter) We made connections at that meeting that were so helpful to us. Part of it was meeting representative from the governor. So MaryAnn Lippert, we're now on an email list, so we get, well, Wendy and I went to the Governor's rural development conference, the governor's conference, rather, on economic development. And we weren't really sure if this was something that we needed to go to, that this was going to be of benefit to us, but through that snowstorm, driving 45 miles an hour to Trego, Wisconsin. Do you all know where Trego is? Yeah, it's way-- -

Voiceover

It's not near here. No, it's way. And we drove slowly, got there, and made wonderful connections. One of the sad things we felt was the Department of Tourism was there and they had heads of all the different departments. There was no arts. Arts is now part of the Department of Tourism, but there was no representation for the arts. Right, so, but you will be happy to know the prisoner, the head of the prison was there, and she got up and she said, "You know," they were talking, they were talking about this governor's thing and we were all saying what's going on with that? Why are we not invited? And she said, "We kind of pushed our way in." And she says, "We're part of economic development." She said, "Look at all the employees we have. "They spend money. "Look at all of the prison guards that we have "in that whole system." Not only that, she says, "We have a base "of future employees that will be coming out of prison." And so yeah, why wasn't arts there? Arts is a big part of development. So we all are gonna be writin' letters to the Department of Tourism, to Stephanie Klett, and saying hey, we would like to see some representation from the Wisconsin Arts Board at the next governor's conference. I want you all to be writing her too, please. (audience laughter) -

Voiceover

Make sure we have her address. Okay, we will. Just Department of Tourism. It's okay. We constantly need to make sure, step back and make sure that we're doing with our arts what our community wants. So as Ann alluded to, we are going to be doing a round table. We've done this once before when we were doing our strategic plan. Chris was involved with that, helping us put that on. This time we have a separate group of community leaders who believe in LOLA that will be monitoring the tables because we don't feel it is a good idea if we on the board are sitting at the tables because if you had some complaint about us, you're not gonna want to say it. Whereas to a stranger, to not a board member, you'd be able to say, eh, you know, they do this, I think that's dumb. We will be giving them some ideas of some of the things that we would like to see happen or that we think maybe the community would like to see happen. Years ago one of our board members talked about an art bus and being able to take an art bus up to Watersmeet where they do not have art. Taking it out to different resorts in the summer. So we're looking at that. Is that something they want to do? We did find out that we're not doing a bus. We're probably gonna do a trailer. Um, Wendy said, "I'm not getting a CDL "to drive any doggone bus." So okay. So I can barely wait to see her 'cause she's this little, tiny car with this big trailer. That's gonna be interesting. But anyway, so is the community interested in that? Is the community interested in pottery? And if they're interested in pottery, are they interested in helping us develop a place where we can do pottery? Because we can't do it in the building that we have now. There's just a myriad of things that could happen. Is it stuff that the community wants? So that's what we're going to be doing at that round table. And from there we're going to be taking it further steps to find out how we can afford to do that. We do do a bunch of free events for our community and that's real, real important. And I'm now going to hand this over to Wendy because Wendy can explain to you all the really cool things that we do. (audience applause) So to follow Ann and Lynn, but I'd like to talk directly about art again and what art brings to us and answer Chris's question to me which was, "How does art bring vitality to a community?" And I think LOLA does that in a couple different ways. First, I'm the programming director with LOLA, and I've been with LOLA since its inception. I was one of those people who answered that survey that came back. I said yes to every question. The questions were "Do you want to see art in your community?" Yes. So you show up at a meeting and pretty soon you're on a board and pretty soon you're hired and working part-time and then pretty soon you're a full-time programming director. So I organize and coordinate all the classes. I get to work with artists every day, which is great for me. I am myself an artist, as well. Self-employed artist since the '90s. And art has been a part of my life all my life. I also rent studio space in downtown, at Land O'Lakes. So another little way of bringing some vitality to the community, having artists embedded there. I'm also a member of that cooperative gallery that sprung up from LOLA, which is a great, great place. There's so many artists up here. And I love that all of you said that you had something in your life that's creative. We all do. I think sometimes we don't even recognize the things about us that are creative in preparing a meal, or putting a little extra flourish in something, or thinking of something new to do with a dish as we go along. That's art. Right there you've just created something totally new. Or maybe even the way that you have a little extra flourish on your signature. That's an artful expression. That art is everywhere, every day in all of us and why it's important here to continue to grow that in our souls and in our spirit and in our communities. It's just something that we all seek and we all need, all the time. I think as this community, we've identified that we have a variety of people, but a lot of people who have retired here and are looking to rekindle some of that art that they had earlier in their lives, so we're providing classes for them. We're providing classes for students within our school system. An extra experience in art. So these are some of the things that an art center in your community can do. Giving vitality back to the community. First it's for personal vitality, for yourself to seek out those opportunities, a place to go and participate in art. Maybe learning something new that you've always wanted to try or meet an artist. Sometimes people I think seem afraid to approach an artist and ask some questions. Artists are very willing to share. It was part of my experience. I wanted to share what I did always and why I joined in LOLA right away. And happy to work with such a hardworking board. They do so much for the community and behind the scene, too. It's just a really pleasant experience. I had all these great notes here and I thought well, I'm just gonna talk about what we do actually for the community and all these things that we do do bring the vitality. First starting at that personal level. If you're empowered and feel good about your community and you have a place to go to do those things that you've always wanted to do or learn or share what you do, it's gonna come back. And having an arts center within a small town like ours gives a sense of pride to the residents. We have this here in our community. Come see us. We've become a destination place. I hear it over and over again. So great that you're here. People can come and view art, see if they wanna take a class, see what others are doing. We're hoping to expand some of our programming into more musical or performance art venues so that's gonna be another offering that we're looking at down the road. So LOLA does quite a bit and I keep hearing it over and over. We're so glad you're here. So needed in our community. And we're a town of about 800. It's just wonderful to hear that everyone who comes through that door is surprised. This is so unexpected. There are so many artists who live up here and one of the things LOLA had recognized when we first started with that first survey, all these people that answered these questions, they're all out here. And we just tap them for sharing their talents. The basis of our programs come directly from our community members, the majority. I have had some other artists come from another part of the state. Now that we own the building we're lucky that we have an apartment area where we can house artists coming in from other areas. This fall we had a very distinguished watercolor artist come from Sweden. How do you know about Land O'Lakes? That's a long story. Friend of a friend of a, and a Facebook, and all of that. But he was incredible and shared his talent with our members and the people who took his class were just so tickled. He was a very interesting person and to have someone come from Sweden to see Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin was pretty cool. We also have another artist coming soon from Madison. This is her second time coming with us. She is making glass beads with our students and is so popular that she's coming back for a second class, so she'll stay in that apartment, too. So that building is getting utilized for a lot of things in a lot of different ways. Also the fee programming that we do, LOLA felt it was very important to have access to art as much as possible and in many ways, and I knew that there were several groups who met in homes. Now they come to the art center. We have a rug hooking guild and they're called the Land O'Lakes Hookers. They have a lot of fun with that name. (audience laughter) So every Monday they're there doing their craft which is intricate, detailed and beautiful. And all original work. And there's about 12 of them that come every Monday and use the space. We offer that space for free. Wednesday is for Watercolor Wednesdays and painters of all sorts, water media come, and hang out and support one another and learn from one another. We have knitters on Friday and now we have a new formed group. It's coloring book sessions for adults. Everyone is into coloring books. Now we talked about stress relief and that is a big thing right now that everybody's getting back into that creative side, that child within that allows ourselves to draw, and coloring is a nice way to start. And from there they're gonna take maybe a drawing class or a painting class. So yeah, lots of different free events that LOLA has done throughout the community and become I would call successful. And people always wanting to come in and share, and we're continually working on some new ways to do that. We've also done, and you're gonna see some of these pictures, projects outside. And one of our tag lines is we are a campus for the creative spirit. Our space is quite small, so we didn't need that overture center, but we needed a room and we needed to have our supplies, but when we have some other events going on we are utilizing the elementary school which puts our community members in touch with the school and what's happening there and our children. It's a beautiful school. They have a wonderful stage. We use our church basements, as well. They're great places to hold bigger functions and line dancing. We have line dancing every Tuesday all summer long. That group has expanded. They're spilling out of the church. I don't know where I'm gonna put them now, but I'll find another spot. So a lot of socialization for our community members through the arts here. All of these things bringing I think a great vitality back to the area. LOLA did approach the building as a rental first. It had been closed for two and a half years, so here we are coming in, offering our services. The owner said, "Yeah, I think this sounds like "a good idea. "I'll let you rent in there." So we took up a space that was vacant. I'm looking forward to this summer working on some of the other vacant spaces that are in our community as pop up places for music or galleries or exhibit spaces. So something to think about within the community. Don't look at it as a bad thing. Look at it as an opportunity I think to go forward and put something new in there. And arts can always turn to an artist, they'll help you out, I think, and they do so much with so little. They'd be willing to sit in an empty space to share what they do. Okay, I think I will show you some of these pictures now. So just to overview of a lot of the things we have done. There are state-liners there. Pictures speak a thousand words, right? Here's our coloring book people. That is 18 people stuffed in our room coloring away. Those are the rugs from the rug hookers. And that was an exhibit called the Floor Show that we did. This was a rustic craft class that we just did for the holiday season. An English high tea. You can see we have quite a bit of variety. This is one of the kids with their leather work. We have summer classes for kids. We see over 195 students this past summer in an eight week period. There's our bugle boy from our dance recital. This is his first time dancing. This is a local teacher from Three Lakes doing a painting class. There's an arty monster created from clay. So all kinds of materials kids have access to. We also do a program, Youth Art Month. Here's one of our artists. He was critiquing kid's work that we hang and show. Some grandkids in there, I think, of Lynn. More dance students. LOLA just has such a fun time with such a great variety. And this is some of our patrons at a fundraiser that we do. And all ages taking classes and learning new things. This is at Sunrise Lodge. We did go out there and bring our materials and work with those people out there. Here's our Swedish artist painting with the adults at a church basement. And they were learning all kinds of new techniques that unfamiliar to us here in America. And materials. He brought over some European materials they got to use. We like to feed people. (audience laughter) Come visit us. Every time we have a function there's a lot of good food. Here's our girls. They're all smiling there. We had a board at the Blizzard Blast that we painted up and people could take their picture. That was at our holiday event. A harpist came and demonstrated. More painting. Lucky I get to have such a great family of artists coming from the cooperative gallery that's right next door. I have 32 friends that I get to call on and teach for us. And there's our board members working hard at our new room. Yeah, an artist demonstrating within the gallery space. Some felting. Cooking classes, very popular. The culinary arts, everybody loves that. She's a local chef. Jessica from Eagle River. Chef Mike McAdams. He's a Land O'Lakes resident. Was a restaurant owner. Here's that coloring book and they're drinking tea. Tea, crumpets, and colors for that. And so many wonderful volunteers. One thing I loved about this community and why I moved up north from the Milwaukee area, the volunteerism and the connection with community people have here. One of our game nights. This is a Kandinsky project. Kids get to learn about artists. More coloring. So popular. That was at Halloween time. Picasso self portraits. I just did that with my homeschool class. Yesterday one of the students said to me, "That Picasso, he's a crazy dude, but I like him." (audience laughter) So I'm glad they got to learn about Picasso. This is the glass bead making. Such an unusual thing. I was quite worried about 10 torches being lit up in our small art room, but they did well. No one burned the place down. We remodeled this year. As we have grown, gotten new cabinetry. We didn't expand our space, we just made it more efficient. We brought in the kiters. A kite club from Milwaukee area here. They flew their kites over the Land O'Lakes airport in July. That's one of our theater images. We give scholarships. These three students, maybe some of you know them from the high school, got to go to a music camp at UW Stevens Point. More Kandinsky work. This is part of the Youth Art Month. LOLA frames over 125 pieces of art, one from each student at the elementary school and we hang it in the gallery. The artists take down their work and we put up the work for them. We give them our artist's reception. They get to see their work hung in a gallery setting. It's pretty cool. That's coming up. I'll be working with artist Debbie Gersick on some collaborative art with the homeschool students. We also incorporate their work into that exhibit. We hire an intern for the summer. We actually pay them a stipend to work and teach with us. They are usually arts education majors. Our last one was a fine arts major and she did a great job. LOLA likes to have a lot of fun at Halloween. This is a quilt lecture. An artist from our community, a quilt artist, is also a historian. She brought her Civil War era quilts that we got to view and talk about. This year we did 28 classes for adults for the year. 35 for kids. And 27 free offerings this summer alone. And that has grown from our very first year with four. We started with four classes and it just took off like a rocket. Everybody was so happy to have something to do. We've become that destination place. We've become that gathering place for community. We've come to that place for creativity. Creativity, the energy that happens within an art space is pretty incredible. It feeds off of one another. If you're afraid about doing anything, come to a class and try it. You will sit next to a child and they will say get in there and do it. This is the Before I Die wall. This was an international mural project that we had put up. That was a fantastic summer offering. It was up all summer on a business outside. People got to write their hopes and dreams. Really gets you to see the pulse of the community. It was great. More images from our Youth Art Month. Those kids are so proud to have their work framed. Another event there. And bead making. We do just a huge variety of classes. So our high tea, we learned about the history of tea, how to make tea properly, and of course they dressed up. (audience laughter) And LOLA gets funky outside. We love to decorate our building and we get artists to help us with the outdoors. Another goal for the future would be some additional public art in our community. I think again another draw as a destination place. Let's have our talented people put the art outside where people can see it or touch it. Experience it. So that's all I have for you. I encourage you like Lynn said to come and visit LOLA. See what's going on in our community for art. Meet your neighbors who are creative people who are making a living doing what they do up here and sharing what they love. We all moved up here I think for the reason that it's beautiful. That art that surrounds us, inspires us all the time, and make sure art is a part of what you do and who you are. I think you'll enjoy your life much better if you keep in touch with that artistic child that's still there and have that good stress relief that we need so much in this day and age especially. I'll let this just run. You can kind of look. And does anyone have any questions for me directly? (audience applause)