Art Shanty Project 2012: Meet the Sashay Shantay Shanty

The Sashay Shantay Shanty prepares to hit the ice

​Winter is full of traditions: Holiday get-togethers, sledding down the neighborhood's best hill, and trekking around a frozen lake to look at art. After a brief haitus, the Art Shanty Project is back on Medicine Lake with a lineup of 20 amazing shanties for you to peek into.

Powered and warmed by artists from around the state, this temporary community on ice offers visitors a chance to do more than just step into a musty ice-fishing house. Here, you can explore the unique world inside each shanty, from the Shanty of Wonder to the Monsters Under the Bed Shanty to the Dance Shanty. Participating artists have worked for months, collaborating on ideas that challenge the way that the space on the ice can be used for creative purposes. 

We recently spoke with Rachel Blomgren about the Sashay Shantay Shanty, the lake's destination location for fashionista shanty-goers.

The shanty is ready to hit the road

​How is your shanty different from the others out on Medicine Lake?

Our true aim was to create a space to showcase stunning fashions. So every Saturday [January 14-28, and Sunday, February 5] at 1 p.m., we will host a fashion show on ice. Each show has a theme, and we have invited members of the community to participate.

We also have a photo booth inside the walls of the shanty, as well as a community cloak, which will begin as a trunk full of brightly-colored scraps, and become an enveloping cape. It will be added to piece by piece by the patrons of the shanties.

How long has everyone been collaborating on the shanty? When did you decide to get the group together and start this process?

This project has been a long time in the making. Fashion designers Emrys Stramer, Lindsay Rhyner, Lela Horst-Baumann, and I worked together on a show called Fashion Sabbath in fall 2009. We wanted to work on another project together, and the shanties seemed to be a great chance. They didn't happen in 2010, and our plan was to apply in 2011. Simultaneously, fashion designers Danielle Everine and Carly Shoen were planning their own fashion shanty experience. I worked with Danielle on Voltage, and Carly and Lela met this summer while staying in Alaska. We first met to discuss plans this fall, and it fell into place from there.

Folks are prepared for the drive

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Your shanty has a lot of chances for visitors to get involved and be entertained.  What do you want visitors to take away from this experience?

We want to show how simple and rewarding working with your hands can be. During the weekends, there will be a member of the group sitting amongst the fabrics working on projects. Patrons are invited to join in the process of cutting the thread, slipping the needle into the fabric, and contributing to a group effort through work on the community cloak.

There is also an element of joyful childhood, held not only in helping with the sewing, but also in the photo booth. Playing dress-up and getting your photo taken is fun and uncomplicated. I would like for people to have the sense that fashion is for everyone and is everywhere. It is not limited to a certain group. The thing that matters the most is that someone took the time to make every piece of clothing that you wear.
 
​What kind of items can visitors expect to find in the trunks upstairs? Can anyone contribute to these trunks?

The trunks will be filled with a variety of things. Some will have scraps of fabric and beginnings of quilts. This for people to stitch together for the community cloak. Some (most, actually) will have clothes made by the six shanty designers, a collection of past and present work. There will also be dress-up clothes for the photo booth. We have invited anyone to contribute their looks to the trunks, but most people opted to just contribute to the runway shows.  

Your group is made up of both accomplished fashion designers and artist-builders. Did anyone find designing pieces for this shanty project different than designing for say, Voltage or a different public event?

I think that we all let loose a little bit. Although we have taken it seriously, it is a chance to have fun without the pressure surrounding events orchestrated for you by other people. It is refreshing to take matters into your own hands, though it is a lot of work.

Halfway done...

​With the fashion designing aspect of the shanty, we have to take into account the weather and the amount of people that will be handling the work. For the builders -- Alex Schroeder, Leif Ogren, and Matt Miller -- it was a lot of work, and they were resigned to dealing with a large group, including a lot of first-time power-tool users. It was really neat to see it all come together, as each builder had a different style; it is truly a collaborative effort.

Your shanty looks like a Victorian home that is submerged beneath the ice. Can you talk about the inspiration behind this design?

We had a few brainstorming sessions, throwing out a wide variety of ideas. We wanted our shanty to clearly relate to our performance and interactive pieces, which we had decided on before the attic idea. The attic is a perfect place to play dress up; sneak away and get lost in the dust motes rising from the creaky lid of an old trunk.

Almost there...

​We are all critical of aesthetics, and wanted things to look nice. In the end, the attic became more Scandinavian looking, which makes sense given our Minnesotan heritage. We liked the idea that the house was there, waiting for someone to discover it, when the lake froze over. It's mysterious, and allows for the visitors to come up with their own story, or, once inside, ask for ours.

What will happen to the Sashay Shantay after the ice melts?

At the end, we will be holding a retrospective showcasing the designers' work, as well as showing the photo-booth pictures and the community cloak. The time and place is to be determined, so keep checking our website, www.sashayshantay.wordpress.com, for details.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2, where we chat with folks from the Naughty Shanty.

Ta-da!

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IF YOU GO:

Art Shanty Project 2012
Medicine Lake
9699 17th Ave. N., Plymouth
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays
Also open Monday, January 16
Through February 5
www.artshantyprojects.org