Art Shanty Projects close after one week because of warm temperatures, melting ice

After a fun opening weekend filled with ice and somewhat cold temperatures, warm weather forced Art Shanty Projects to shut down. The project won’t move to the shore, aka Plan Beach, because the ground is not frozen, and the park is muddy. Moving it to the mud would ruin the park and the shanties.

The cancellation became official on Thursday. The project was able to operate for two days on ice last weekend, Jan. 27 & 28. The original opening date was delayed a week because of warm weather.

“We had one really great weekend,” Art Shanty Projects Artistic Director Erin Lavelle said.

The race to remove shanties from the still frozen-ish lake, or the “shanty shimmy” as Lavelle called it, starts Thursday afternoon. The internal deadline to get shanties off the ice is Sunday.

As of Wednesday, the team measured 12 inches of ice in the village, and there are still some people out on the ice in individual shanties, ice fishing.

“We’re still checking the ice, and safety is top of mind for us with everybody, but it’s an all-hands-on-deck effort and it’s done in a mindful way,” she said. “We are not in emergency mode right now, but if we had waited much longer we might be.”

At press time, nothing on the lake had sunken and no ice had cracked.

Lavelle said the decision was made because the ice would not be stable enough to support the anticipated crowds.

On opening weekend, Art Shanty Projects greeted more than 10,000 visitors, and artists got to interact with many visitors. Normally Art Shanty Projects sees around 25,000 visitors over the monthlong run, so opening weekend was a boon.

Lavelle said the project usually nets around $70,000, but during the weekend Art Shanty was open it collected around $20,000. The lack of collected monies is a concern for Lavelle. The organization has an annual $190,000 budget, with 79% of expenses dedicated to paying participants, ranging from artists and performers to ASL interpreters and photographers.

Last year’s Art Shanty took place entirely on shore, for only the first time in the project’s history. In 2022, it was on ice, and in 2021 it was canceled because of COVID-19.

This year Art Shanty celebrated its 20-year anniversary, cementing itself as a Minnesota winter art tradition. But the future is uncertain.

“We really are looking for community support,” she said. “We are looking to pay out the artists’ contracts of course, but it’s a make-it or break-it situation. We are hoping people will be generous and give via our website.”