28th Annual Art & Artists Celebration 

About

Join us at Franconia Sculpture Park for our 28th Annual Art & Artists Celebration! Experience a day filled with creativity and community, featuring free art-making workshops, live performances, a special musical performance by the Oshkii Giizhik Singers, and an exclusive showcase of new work by artist Marlena Myles.

Stay tuned for more details!

A food truck will be on site, and alcoholic beverages will be sold by Franconia Sculpture Park.

About the Oshkii Giizhik Singers
Oshkii Giizhik Singers (OGS) are a group of women from the Fond du Lac/Duluth area Native American community who sing traditional and contemporary Anishinaabe songs while hand drumming. OGS were founded in 2006 and have recorded three albums, the first of which, “It is a New Day” was awarded a Native American Music Award for best traditional recording in 2009. The group roster has had over 50 different singers over the 16 years OGS has been together with the average number of singers on a given date being anywhere from 4 to 8.

About Marlena Myles
Marlena Myles is a self-taught Native American (enrolled Spirit Lake Dakota & also Mohegan/Muscogee) artist located in St Paul, Minnesota. Her art brings modernity to Indigenous history, languages and oral traditions while using the land as a teacher. Growing up on her traditional Dakota homelands here in the Twin Cities, she enjoys using her artwork to teach Minnesotans of all backgrounds the Indigenous history of this place we call home.

Her professional work includes children’s books, augmented reality, murals, fabrics, animations and has shown her fine art in galleries such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Museum of Russian Art, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art to name a few. In 2022, she created the Google Doodle for Native American Heritage Month (November) to celebrate North American Indigenous Stickball.

She has installed three site-specific augmented reality public art installations: the Dakota Spirit Walk (Saint Paul), the Sacred Hoop Walk (Minnesota Landscape Arboretum) and the Wodakota Walk (Caponi Art Park). She owns a Dakota publishing company, Wíyounkihipi (We Are Capable) Productions, to create a wider platform that educates and honors the culture, language and history of Dakota people. In 2023, she was awarded the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, Joyce Award, Rise25 Mozilla Honoree and is a 2024 ALL ARTS Artist in Residence.

Marlena’s upcoming project at Franconia Sculpture Park is made possible with support from the Joyce Foundation.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the East Central Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

This event is part of Take Me to the River, a project of ArtReach St. Croix