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An Artist's Retreat

Writer's picture: laceysquierlaceysquier

Updated: Jan 25

(This article was originally published in the Winter 2024-2025 edition of the Ely Winter Times.)


What is the Tofte Lake Center?? It’s the best place in the world – for anyone who loves water, loves wilderness, loves the boreal forest, loves loons, eagles, or stars… and loves art.


The Tofte Lake Center (TLC) is a nonprofit artists retreat center on Tofte Lake off the Fernberg Road, east of Ely. It was founded in 2008 by Liz Engelman, and she serves as its Executive Director. Liz has created a benevolent institution that invites artists into values-aligned experiences. Those values are: nature is nurture, unplugging is connection, play is work, and creativity is inclusive. Residencies are about aligning, centering, grounding, and creating at nature’s pace. 


In spite of having heard about all this when Liz was my guest on the What’s Up Ely Podcast (episode 12 – one of my all-time favorites), I still wasn’t sure what to expect upon arrival. 


My application for an artist residency at the Tofte Lake Center (TLC) went something like this: 


“Community, and the vital importance of feeling a sense of belonging in community, is the ultimate theme of the script I’m working on for a project with my friend, M, a filmmaker and a storyteller. The ability to be in community with other artists at the Tofte Lake Center would be an exciting, meta source of inspiration. I’m new to even identifying as an artist and using the word art to describe my writing compulsion. Feeling community and belonging among other artists would be deeply affirming, and would fuel the persistence needed to fulfill my artistic dreams.” 


And so you can see that, in February, I was grappling with my identity as a writer and creator, and yearning to fill belonging among artists. I was feeling hopeful, I was feeling ambitious. 


Six months later, by the time I turned left off the Fernberg, I had forgotten all about that version of me. Instead I was totally and completely burnt out on “community.” I was tunnel visioned on solitude. 


I entered the beloved Roadhouse feeling (and looking) haggard, exhausted from chronically shoving too much work and activity onto my proverbial plate. I had been go-go-go-going for months, and, to be perfectly honest, I wanted nothing to do with these strangers with whom I was dining. 


Over our orientation dinner that night, fellow residents and I learned about TLC’s decidedly few rules: the only thing you have to do is leave [when the residency ends]; there are no “shoulds” in the woods; and protect your middle (that juicy, tender time between shedding the chaos of arrival and mentally preparing to depart). 


There are no shoulds in the woods. 

Delicious slow down – delicious, delicious. I sat next to an open window as lightning rolled over the lake, and I wept with gratitude for the gift of time. Time to create. Time to feel. Time to experience the glory of the Wilderness. The awe and wonder of slowing down was a salve. 


I was fortunate to participate in the only two-week residency of the summer. I spent the first week shedding the frantic energy of urgency. Then something magical happened half way through – the juicy middle that we were encouraged to protect. 


My residency was in collaboration with a creative partner and friend, M Baxely. We were embracing a rare opportunity to work on a short film project together –  physically in each other’s company. This is valuable given that M lives in Grand Marais, and I live in Ely. 


Our time together at the Tofte Lake Center was about dreaming, about imagining what could be. What if we make a film that we’re proud of? What if we create something delightful, thoughtful, vulnerable, powerful, beautiful, and true? What if it gets people talking about community? What if we grow our collective capacity for grace? 


After settling into that soul nourishing middle, I was also finally able to ask myself: What if I connected deeply with other artists, from other parts of the country, creating in other mediums? That second week I fell into platonic love with my fellow residents.  


Sid, a Brooklyn based screenwriter who was using his residency to record an album exploring his family heritage as an Indian American man. He made us delicious chickpea curry, and refused to let us ignore the glory of the night sky. Maxine, a San Francisco based dancer of Turkish heritage, taught us about the power of dance and movement. Banna, an Eritrean-American, Harlem based playwright inspired me to consider what makes a media mogul (— and why can’t that be us??). Lane, an LA based film director who was using his residency to write a memoir about his experience as a trans man, was the captain of the sauna. We had group saunas every night, thanks to Lane’s enthusiasm for this northern MN tradition (previously foreign to him). 


By candle light in the steamy sauna, and under the stars during intermittent dips in the brisk lake, we talked about music and movies and life and culture and history and time and love and family. We talked about our art, we talked about our selves. It was a transformative experience. 


It’s a beautiful thing, to see and be seen by people you respect, to fall in love with several erstwhile strangers all at once. 


Through the Tofte Lake Center, Liz makes the beauty of the boreal forest, and the vast enchantment of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, as well as her special skills in artistic stewardship accessible to all. 


TLC offers several types of residencies: Individual artist, MN BIPOC artist, artist educators, MN parent artists, national emerging artist. For more information, and to apply for a 2025 residency, check out www.toftelake.org/2025residencies. Artist residency applications will open on December 1 and close on December 31, 2024. Stay tuned for announcements about the 2025 Tofte Lake Center Day at the Lake, wherein the campus is open to the public. 


Sign up to receive Boundary Waters Connect newsletters to receive updates about the status of the film project that M and I were working in while at TLC. (BoundaryWatersConnect.com).

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