Hovland Arts Festival celebrates 18 years of community art

Chuck Olsen | July 9, 2024

It was a warm and breezy afternoon at the Hovland Town Hall, where the semi-annual Hovland Arts Festival returned the weekend of July 6 and 7. Now in its 18th year, this year’s festival featured 50 artists inside and outside Hovland Town Hall.

“It’s about community,” says artist and festival co-organizer Rachel Rae Klesser. “It’s about celebrating this community in particular, and showing off how much talent we have in the area.”

This year’s festival featured a jam-packed lineup of Cook County musicians and writers, sponsored by Arrowhead Regional Arts Council. “They pay a real good living wage, and they were all so excited to get the gig, so we’re proud to have them,” says Klesser.

WTIP spoke with Grand Portage-based artist Donovan Dahmen, known for his mixed media woodwork, about his first time as a participant at the festival.

“I like it. People are very interactive and talking to you, and they like the art, so it’s going pretty good,” he said.

Dahmen was selling prints of his artwork Ma’iingan (Wolf). “I think the wolf is something that we all connect to. It reminds us of, nature, wildness. This particular wolf I did get from Voyageurs Wolf Project. I kind of add my own type of style to it. And so I use a picture of a wolf as a reference, and then kind of add my own feelings or different things like that to the wolf.”

Hovland resident James Egan is a lifelong fisherman who was selling paintings and fly fishing lures.

“My passion has always been trout and fly fishing,” says Egan. “I’ve taken up fly tying recently. And it’s fun to use them and to actually accomplish something by finishing a fly, getting a fly to look the way you want it to, but also to get a fly to catch fish.”

This was Egan’s third year returning as a festival artist. “I like what people say. I like to help people fish.”