Greetings!

It's now summer in the northern hemisphere and, outside of a little stormy weather (see below), our art festival season has been off to a great start! It's been a pleasure seeing so many familiar faces already this year. The next several weeks take us to communities in greater Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. Please come and visit if you are in any of these areas. We will return to the Twin Cities in August for the Uptown Art Fair.

• June 22 - Lemonade Concert & Art Fair - Campus of St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
• June 24-25 - Park Point Art Fair - End of Park Point, Duluth, MN
• July 1 - Shell Lake Fine Art Festival - Shell Lake, WI
• July 8-9 - Grand Marais Arts Festival - Grand Marais, MN
• July 13-15 - Downtown Fargo Street Fair - Fargo, ND
• July 29-30 - Alexandria Art in the Park - Alexandria City Park, Alexandria, MN

Park Point, more formally known as Minnesota Point, is a seven-mile long sandbar in Duluth that extends from Canal Park to the Superior, Wisconsin harbor entry. It is interrupted by the man-made Duluth canal, and hence, is technically an island and no longer a sandbar. Technicalities aside, Minnesota Point, combined with the three-mile Wisconsin Point is believed to be the largest freshwater sandbar in the world.

I was walking along the beach on a recent visit to Park Point and noticed some interesting cloud formations in the sky over Lake Superior. Soon, I found the sand formation in the image above that almost-perfectly complements the cloud pattern in the sky. The golden hues of the beachgrass also offer a nice contrast with the light blue sky and lake.

Because of the simplicity of these images, they are great as desktop wallpaper backgrounds, and I have added the specially-sized images here.

"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter." - Ansel Adams