Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org [Music] Welcome to to Common Ground.

I'm Producer/Director Scott Knudson.

In this two segment episode, Janet Almquist of Brainerd demonstrates the Scandinavian art of rosemaling.

Then, we revisit Itasca State Park for a fly fishing class.

[Music] Rosemaling is rose painting.

Maling is painting in Norwegian or Swede, either one.

So someday, when you're sitting home painting your house, and someone calls and says hey bro what are you doing, say I'm maling.

And they're going to say you're what, because that's painting in Norwegian.

So what I am doing I'm painting flowers.

Anybody that's a Scandinavian, though, would like to do what I'm doing, because it's part of your history.

And I started painting probably 25 years ago when I had a table like this.

And we put a table skirt on because underneath everybody put all their boxes.

This was for a Heritage Fest and I thought well we can't have that.

So I put the table skirt on, it looked kind of plain, so I did some scrolls and some flowers and everybody came up and said, where did you get that tablecloth.

And it was so much they were more interested in that than they were the baked good.

So I thought, you know, if they think that's good maybe I should start painting and I started painting.

And now 20 some, 25 some years later I'm still painting.

So many years ago when the Vikings were going all over Europe and down in that area, they would see all the beautiful artwork done there.

The big columns that were on the big buildings, and it's called arcampus or rococo, and that's what all the scrolls.

If you look on a dollar bill you'll see some on a dollar bill.

They did more than just plunder.

Once they got back into Norway and Sweden they went to their own region and painted what they remembered.

Different regions have different styles.

Rosemaling starts with a lot of C's and S's.

And everybody can do a C, you learned how to do that in grade school, and everybody can do an S. So that's what we do.

We have a scroll here and we have flowers and that's what we do.

And I think I need some white and we'll do this a good way here.

I'll put some white on here.

I'm going to do what we call a double load.

I'm going to run my brush through here and then I'm going to run it through the green and I'm going to decide where I'd like the highlights.

So if you want the highlights on top of your scroll or bottom it doesn't matter it's all up to you.

After you start painting you'll know what you want to do.

And I'm going to do these on the top.

So I'm going to come around here and come up here, come around and turn.

And I didn't get any white.

It didn't want to come on here so we'll just keep going because you don't really make mistakes, you just fix them.

Fix them the way you like.

So I'll just look at it and come around again and again.

We've got one up here and I'm going to bring my brush around and come here and here and I have a scroll.

That's just how simple it is.

And we get another little green.

I need this over here though.

This is telemark is what I'm doing.

We'll come around here again, flatten this out as I come up and I'll come in here and here, get the white where it belongs.

Normally you want to hold it this way because you have more balance the one arm on top of the other one and that's another hard thing to do.

I'm always telling people now stop that now and let's start all over again and put your hand up because then you'll be able to pull some of your colors where you want.

You have more freedom that way.

And after you've painted a while, and you'll decide whether you like to paint coming toward you or going away from you, where you bring your strokes.

Let's see if I got...oh here we got some more here, so let's get a little more paint.

Take a little off.

When you start out you want to do a lot of practicing.

I always say it's 10% talent, 90% practice, and you have to practice a lot just to know how to load your brush.

Anybody can do this like I said though it takes a little practice, and all you do is practice.

I always tell my students to paint a piece of cardboard.

This is the back of a cereal box.

And then I just paint it.

That way you can tell if you like the colors or not.

Because some colors just don't look good.

So you want to make sure that you like that and that'll give you something to work with.

Otherwise you're kind of working at it blind and then you're not too happy when you get through.

We'll do some flowers.

You have to sit and do it for a while to just decide yes I can do that.

Oh heck is that all that is, that's really fun, I can do that.

And that's what I did.

I just always felt no I'm just not a painter I don't know what to do.

Well you just go and keep doing it and eventually you'll be just as good as anybody else.

There's about four different brushes that are nice to use and best thing to do is always buy good brushes.

Don't buy any cheap ones because then you're going to decide you can't paint.

It just doesn't work, you have to have a good brush.

You don't need a lot of paint, not something that's bright yellows and blues and greens on here because that's not really Scandinavian.

I'm using Norwegian green and I'm using red iron oxide and white and that's what I'm getting on the whole and I'll use some green for leaves.

Basically you only need a few and it's like primary colors.

They say if you have the primary colors that's all you need because you mix them.

Well that's the same thing with this.

And then I always put my paint in on a flat thing because you run your brush this way through it.

If you go this way you're going to paint the whole thing.

I just want half my brush with one color and then you can blend them together, works good.

Rosemaling started out with all men.

The men were the Vikings and they were supposedly all these strong winning over the world.

They're the ones who brought rosemaling up into Norway and Sweden, the Scandinavian countries.

Very few women rosemaled way back when it, when rosemaling was done.

They did a whole room.

Churches over there and I've seen two or three of them.

They're beautiful.

The ceilings are all done, everything is rosemaled because they had dark homes and they wanted to brighten them up so they started putting their painting on the walls.

They painted their cupboards, they painted their chairs and their tables.

Upstairs my kitchen chairs are painted, rosemaled.

They brightened up their houses that way.

Maybe they had a few women later in later years, but when they came over here some of the women started doing it.

So now it is mainly women who do it, but there are men who are really good.

Once again I'm going to just run through here on my white and I'll go through the green and give it a couple little whippies here to blend it in.

I got it right here.

I'll do these.

I just did a base coat.

I give it one coat, I lightly sand it, put another coat on, and then I sand it again with very fine sandpaper or paper brown bag or something.

And the back is just painted black and if you could see this, all of this I can wipe off because I put varnish or shellac or some kind of polyurethane and then I can just wipe it off when I'm done.

'Cause you always end up getting paint on the back where you didn't want it, so then I can just clean that up so.

But I can use a charcoal pencil and I can just draw my pattern on because that will draw.

Or I can use, well I call it transfer paper, but it's just transfer paper that you lay down.

So you take a finer thinner piece of paper like this.

Get you one here from behind.

You put this on and you're very careful and you tape it down.

So this piece stays down where you wanted it and you can copy patterns, and I suggest people do that when they first start because it's easier.

Once you get it on you know how to color.

You sat with crayons when you were young, well, that's what you do, and it's a good way to even learn colors that you like is get the crayons out and color.

It can be as simple as you want it to be.

I can give you an example by doing it.

I'm going to come around like that.

Well, no.

Oh I guess maybe I'm to make this another one and I'll come up here and I'll come here and then I'm going to come like this and go up here and here's my S backwards.

But I made an S up here.

Now I'm going to come up this way and maybe I'll make another S and now I'm going to make a few little cute lines here.

And let's make another C over here.

That's how you learn.

Well, maybe I'm going to put a few flowers here.

So now I'm just going to practice.

Oh I really don't like that, I should put some color in with that shouldn't I?

Maybe just a little.

And I'll put a little, little touch of color here and there and you don't have to think about it.

Oh let's put some little flowers here.

Sometimes I do when I'm doing it this way I just put it on and I twist my brush.

I can make a circle by standing my brush straight up and turning like this so it's just learn all this stuff and it's just I can make one even bigger here because now I've got, and I'll make a tiny one right here, so we got that dropping down from there.

And then if I wanted I could just hook all these together and get down here.

And I did that kind of cute thing and what did it take me five minutes and it's not even good.

It's just done.

And I can go back and touch this up and I can use a liner, which I haven't got that far yet.

Let's see here's one, yeah, that'll work.

Let's use some white.

I can do like this, join that together and think oh, you know, that's kind of a cute vase.

Maybe I'll just put some flowers up there and I just will touch this and make a few little flowers.

I always only do three, five, six or seven, don't ever make them even.

And then I can bring this down here.

Maybe we've got a glass vase there so we'll just do it all the way down.

So there you go.

And you could spend another hour on here and make it really look nice but this is just what you do to practice.

Oh well that's simple.

I can do that, I can make commas, I can make S's, I can make C's.

So you just sit down and play and have fun.

[Music] So it's just a fun thing to keep you busy when you don't know what to do, when it's raining outside or it's snowing too much, you just want to sit here and pass the time away by painting.

You can rosemal on anything, absolutely anything.

I saw a picture of a computer screen and, no it wasn't a screen it was the computer when we had the big ones, and the whole thing was rosemaled.

People rosemal on their shoes, they rosemal on purses, they rosemal.

You can order a pattern to rosemal your KitchenAid mixer and I thought well you should do that.

Well why just sit down and paint on it.

Well it's blue, kind of a darker blue, and so I could do it all white and I thought well that'd be kind of pretty.

Well I haven't done it yet.

Most people do plates, bowls, things to hang on the wall.

I've painted sweatshirts, t-shirts, you can paint clothes.

A fun thing to do.

Look around and well if you saw some of my cubby holes here, you know that I got stuff needs to be painted.

That's anything you want to paint on.

Just have fun with them.

Paint Christmas ornaments, paint Easter stuff, just anything you want to do so that you can put them all over your house and give them as gifts and...

This is a root and when you're doing telemark, this type of rosemaling, everything comes out from the root.

Your scrolls all go so that when it comes back everything will go, even this if you look, if you take this and you kept going, you would come around to the root.

You don't want something, you don't want something here sticking out, like this flower sticking out this way.

You want it to look nice and flowing.

So this is a root and that's where it starts from.

How's that?

Sometimes the realties of broadcast scheduling means that we have to leave great footage on the cutting room floor.

This next piece is an example of that.

I'm Connie Cox.

I'm the lead interpretive naturalist here at Itasca State Park and we're actually standing at the beautiful site known as Peace Pipe Vista.

And here at Itasca my main job is to educate people about the beauty of Itasca.

So we do educational programs from campfires, walks, talks.

I just like working with the Friends of Itasca helping them make Itasca a better place.

Take one table.

One of you take another one.

Sure.

You can take that one back there.

And we're going to put your rod together.

You won't have any trouble doing that.

You done much fishing?

A little.

You'll be alright.

There, see those ones?

When I'm working with the Friends of Itasca, I do attend their board meetings.

So sometimes people say those are really boring, board meetings, but actually not with the Friends of Itasca because all of them have a passion and a love of Itasca.

So we might be planning future projects.

They might be making suggestions.

For example, they realized the need for fishing, and they said you know Lake Ozawindib is a great lake but there's nowhere where people can fish.

And so in those board meetings they plan how can we help the park.

Can we raise money to help pay for part of a fishing pier and they did.

They paid for half of a fishing pier at Lake Ozawindib and it's awesome going down there and seeing dads and moms and kids now fishing on Lake Ozawindib where in the past they couldn't.

But if you're fishing trout or some other finicky fish like bonefish, you got to really set that hook just right, just not too soon, not too late.

And when you're sitting in that board meeting and you're seeing them saying where can we help you, but then they start telling stories about when I was a kid fishing on, and it's just this wonderful camaraderie.

They're still flipping, they're still flipping, they'll be okay.

It's this wonderful sharing of experiences on Itasca, but it's also this goal and vision for the future.

There's something after it, there's something after it.

Okay so here it's better to do just one hand.

I know the other boy is doing it with two, but let me just do this for... Well that's what they are here.

The big ones are out farther.

So get the fly out that far.

Now watch it and get ready.

And making Itasca better for the park visitors and for the park itself.

Oh yeah that's a nice one.

Now that's a real bluegill, right, I mean as opposed to an unreal bluegill.

You're going to have a little trouble getting it off I think.

I see a buried hook.

The Friends of Itasca have helped us in other ways, as well.

Often times we have programs such as the family fishing Fridays and Mondays or we do a fly casting program.

Okay Jackson come over here.

I'm going to give you the motion by doing it with you.

You hold the rod, you hold the line under your finger.

That a boy.

Just one hand, you don't need two.

I'm gonna make the motion.

This is the motion you're gonna have to duplicate.

Watch the line.

Look left, look right, look left, look right.

But sometimes we can't get replacement equipment such as tackle and you need tackle if you want to catch a fish.

You need bait, live bait, if you want to catch a fish, and so the Friends of Itasca, through their fundraising, they help us get replacement tackle.

They help us with paying for the presenters if they're training or teaching someone a skill.

And it just has to click on.

Just take that if you would.

The Friends of Itasca, they don't just do interpretive programs, it's not just about paying for musicians or teaching fly casting, they believe in preserving our resources as well.

Fly rods come anywhere from 6 ft to 15 ft long, standard fly rod is 9 ft long.

This is a five weight which means that the weight of the line is a five weight line.

And they help us just buy something as simple as a container of nightcrawlers.

But it's important and we are teaching the next generation about the joys of fishing and they're a part of that.

If I bend the rod this much the fly is not going to go anywhere, but if I bend it back like this it's going to go.

So it's the analogy would be like a bow, if you pull the bow back this far the arrow is not going to even get to Scott.

If you pull the a bow back this far it's going to go a long ways, so you have to make the fly rod bend.

You never know how their actions are going to help reach out to other people visiting our park and what that person might be going through and how you help them through this beautiful setting around us, but also what other recreation we can provide to make it meaningful.

I want you to watch.

Stand over here Henry.

What I want you to watch is not the fly line but just my hand and my wrist.

That's the motion.

Thanks so much for watching.

Join us again on Common Ground.

If you have an idea for Common Ground in north central Minnesota, email us at legacy@lptv.org or call 218-333-3014.

To watch Common Ground online visit lptv.org and click local shows.

[Music] To order episodes or segments of Common Ground call 218-333-3020.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

Member FDIC.

Closed captioning is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.

More information available at bemidjiairport.org.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people, November 4th, 2008.

If you watch Common Ground online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org