Artsy classes and Great Lakes scenery draw creative travelers

A breeze stirred, and several people scrambled to hold down sketchbook pages without dripping paint or dropping their travel-sized palettes. Books teetered on the laps of aspiring artists, perched on camp stools or logs overlooking a scenic Lake Superior inlet on Wisconsin's Madeline Island.

"Yes! Use lots of color," encouraged Maru Godas, a guest instructor from Barcelona, Spain, while looking over the shoulder of a Madeline Island School of the Arts student. "It's good!"

Godas, one of three instructors in a weeklong sketchbooking workshop, had offered a lesson in using gouache paint — a vibrant hybrid of watercolor and acrylics — in the morning before this afternoon excursion to paint outdoors.

Brushes swished. Eyes squinted. A distant kayak drifted closer, and we happily added a pop of red to the blue and green landscape. Later, I sat near Susan Amodeo of Blue Springs, Mo., beneath a towering pine on the beach and studied the way sunlight flickered across the bay.

"I never forget a place I draw or paint," she said, explaining how art requires her to slow down, pay attention and be fully in the moment.

For 10 years, aspiring artists, writers, photographers and quilters have found their way to Madeline Island School of the Arts, a roughly five-hour trip from the Twin Cities. About 430 residents call this island home year-round, but the number rises to about 2,500 for the summer.

La Pointe, the island's one small hub, blends a smattering of shops, a history museum, a ferry dock that clunks as vehicles deboard, and quirky spots such as Tom's Burned Down Cafe, an open-air bar. It's less than two miles inland to the school's farm-inspired campus.

Cars crunched onto the gravel drive as students arrived from across the continent — from Tucson, Ariz., to Quebec and San Francisco to the Bronx — to reach the largest and only inhabited Apostle Island. The remaining 21 islands make up Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, off Wisconsin's northern coast near Bayfield.

Most School of the Arts participants stay onsite, spread out among white-trimmed red cottages. They gather for communal meals in the barn-inspired dining hall with a photography studio upstairs. They meet in a milkhouse-style workshop space filled with natural light, meander paths mown into the meadow or sit at tables tucked into small groves of trees.

Colleen Bell, a retired Hamline University professor from Minneapolis who has attended memoir workshops here, fondly recalled waking up to fog hovering over the grasses, and returning to her room after dark, encircled by fireflies and stars. Coyotes could also be heard howling in the night.

"The physical beauty of the place helps me write with more intensity than I am able to do anywhere else," she said.

School enrollees come for the dedicated time to create and to learn more about specific topics within photography, writing, painting and sketching, textile art and quilting. Others jump at the chance to learn from internationally known artists, such as textile designer and color expert Kaffe Fassett, folk art-influenced textile artist Sue Spargo, and urban sketchbooker Koosje Koene.

Students bond quickly through presentations, demonstrations, island excursions and by sharing ideas and techniques. Some lessons are unexpected.

An outing to the Madeline Island Museum allowed a small group of sketchbookers to roam and find artifacts that drew interest. I spent an hour sketching a beaded Ojibwe vest with flowers, a decorated birchbark basket and a 500-year-old dugout canoe.

As my eyes studied the details that my fingers moved to capture, I could also listen to Red Cliff Chippewa guide Rob Goslin answer visitors' questions about artifacts like the dugout, which would be sunk into Lake Superior each winter and recovered in the spring.

"I wish it could tell me its stories," he said. I, too, felt a yearning to know more. That comes with the gift of slowing down to sketch. It allows time to wonder, to ponder, to learn.

Madeline Island runs its workshops from June through September. School of Art founder Charles Meech found a way to expand workshops to January and February by partnering with Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson, owned by the same family as Minnesota's Grand View Resort.

He then expanded with springtime workshops in Santa Fe, N.M. This October the school will offer workshops in Bar Harbor, Maine, for the first time.

Katy Perry, a retired educator from Minneapolis who has taken memoir workshops at Madeline Island and Tucson, said natural settings — whether they're on an Apostle Island or tucked into the Sonoran Desert — can spark a spiritual connection that nurtures creativity.

"It was camp for adults," said Shradha Shah, an emergency medicine doctor who traveled from the San Francisco Bay Area for last summer's urban sketchbooking workshop. "The friends I made over the week I've still been in touch with, and we've continued drawing together."

St. Cloud-based Lisa Meyers McClintick has been a freelance writer and photographer for the Star Tribune since 2001. She's @minnelisa on Instagram.

Scenic Great Lakes settings have long inspired destination schools for artists and artisans. Here are some of the best within a six-hour drive from the Twin Cities.

The Clearing, Ellison Bay, Wis.: One of the country's oldest folk schools, started by Jens Jensen in 1935 in Door County, offers lodging and weeklong workshops in its historic buildings for classes such as painting, weaving, woodturning, writing and photography. One- or two-day workshops run through the fall and winter (theclearing.org).

Grand Marais Art Colony, Grand Marais, Minn.: With summer art classes that began in the 1950s, this now-year-round school offers multi-day classes in lidded ceramic vessels, etched metal prints, katazome textile design, skateboard art and watercolor skyscapes (grandmaraisartscolony.org).

Madeline Island School of the Arts, La Pointe, Wis.: Upcoming workshops include macro and mushroom photography, improvised freestyle quilting, creating printed fabrics, creative nonfiction, and realism in plein air painting (1-715-747-2054; madelineartschool.com).

North House Folk School, Grand Marais, Minn.: This lauded folk school on Lake Superior offers year-round workshops and festivals focused on woodworking, boatbuilding, fiber arts, photography, silversmithing, outdoor skills and more (northhouse.org).

Peninsula School of Art, Fish Creek, Wis.: First-timers can try out half-day classes before committing to four-day workshops through this Door County arts hub that began in 1965. This summer's offerings include aluminum casting, woodcut printing, pottery, enamel jewelry, metalsmithing and soft pastels. A meal plan can be included (peninsulaschoolofart.org).