Thousands of people enjoy art on a frozen Minneapolis lake despite bone-chilling temperatures

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Saturday was cold even for Minneapolis, but that didn’t stop thousands of people from tromping out onto a frozen lake to immerse themselves in art, make new friends — and try their best to stay warm.

The annual Art Shanty Projects drew crowds onto Lake Harriet for the first of four weekends of interactive, often silly and occasionally downright strange art events. The art was presented in or near shanties, a repurposing of the shelters often seen on Minnesota lakes for hardy souls who ice fish in the frigid depths of winter.

Minnesotans are passionate about water and view the state’s thousands of lakes as public spaces to enjoy, even during winters that would keep people elsewhere deep under the covers, sai Erin Lavelle, the organization’s artistic director.

“In the summertime you’ll see people in boats and swimming, in canoes and kayaks. And in the winter you’ll see people on the frozen lakes,” Lavelle said. “So they bike and ski and ice skate and ice fish, and we happen to make art on the frozen lake.”

In the 21 years the event has been held, Lavelle said it has been curtailed by warm winters a few times but never because it was too cold. On this weekend, temperatures weren’t expected to top the single digits.

That cold has frozen the lake surface to a depth just over 13 inches (33 centimeters) — plenty thick enough to support the commotion on the ice above.

This year’s projects include some elaborate and innovative displays, such as a knitting pavilion in which visitors weave hand-dyed yarn into panels to complete the roof and walls; a three-ring circus with music, poetry and clowning; a Cat World where people can be transformed into felines; dancing in a “Disco Inferno Hot Box”; and a film studio where people create their own short movies.

Plus there are singing and theater opportunities, ice biking and open air painting.

Although Minnesotans take pride in getting outside even amid the snow and cold, Lavelle said the event’s surveys show it’s the first time on a frozen lake for 10% to 25% of the roughly 25,000 people who typically attend the four-weekend event.

“Getting people to feel connected with friends and strangers and winter is the greatest thing we can do,” Lavelle said. “We just want to be a social place for the public to visit and feel like they’re a part of something bigger.”