The Gallery is open, now bring on summer!

Port Wing is usually a pretty quiet place in the winter.  This year was the exception during January, February & March when we had all the ice cave visitors passing through our town. But in a typical year, it's a good sign that summer is coming when the summer businesses start opening up.  And today was opening day for the Hoth-Lee Art Gallery.

The Hoth-Lee Art Gallery is run by our friends, Sandy & Nancy, and back in 1999 they came up here from Iowa and bought this building that was once a church.  They put in a lot of work to fix it up into a beautiful showplace for the art created by various artists living in our area.  I'm not sure if it was intentional, but deciding to make it yellow with a blue roof fits in perfectly with this community settled by Swedish immigrants.

Sandy and Nancy are both artists themselves.  Nancy does beautiful work with fused glass and she also paints with water colors.  Sandy is the photographer and is always finding new ways to reproduce her photos, most of area scenes, in everything from greeting cards to beautifully mounted artwork for your walls.  

Nancy is standing by one of their jewelry displays, but you can also see some pottery by Gregory & Terese Melis and one of the new infinity scarves by an area weaver.

The old church windows let in some cheery light on a sunny day.  Add to that some soothing background music sung by folksinger Sara Thomsen of Duluth, and you have a perfect shopping experience.

On this shelf are several smaller metal scultpure pieces by Sara Balbin who has a studio nearby in Drummond, Wisconsin, as well as pottery from a couple different potters.  Also on the top is a new line of photos that Sandy started last year, "The World According to Emily," featuring their little cat, Emily...of course.  Very cute and so timely with the current Internet cat fascination.

This is their library corner where they feature books by area authors or authors of books about our area and Lake Superior.  New this year in the library corner are jigsaw puzzles with a lake theme.  And notice all of Sandy's photographs!

Greeting cards, wood carvings, pottery and more

One of the larger Sara Balbin metal sculptures

More mounted photographs & metal sculptures occupy what used to be the altar area of the church.  And once a year in the fall, they move everything out of the way, set up chairs for about 50 guests, and put on a house concert featuring Sara Thomsen and her guitar.

They have a beautiful gallery and their success shows in all of the customers who come back year after year to see what's new in the Hoth-Lee Art Gallery.  Come and visit the Gallery!