Vesterheim Blog

We love hearing from Folk Art School students and were inspired by Juli Seydell Johnson’s project! Read what she has to say about Vesterheim Folk Art School classes and check out the artwork from her learning project!

From Juli:

I’m from Iowa City and am a regular folk art student here at Vesterheim. My grandma was Norwegian, and my family had Norwegian traditions growing up, but I didn’t really develop an interest until about right before COVID in the early 2020s. I’ve been to Vesterheim several times since then for rosemaling classes and kolrosing and a few others that have been just amazing with fun people and fun times.

I don’t consider myself good at any of them yet, but it’s enjoyable to come up to Decorah for a few days respite to explore folk art. I feel like it is part of my history and part of my learning about my history in my family. Walking through the museum is a lot like walking through my grandma’s house even though she passed away a long time ago, so it’s a lot of memories for me when I come here.

This week, I’m taking the plein air outdoor landscape painting class for the very first time. It’s been a lot of fun! I’m going to get the most improved in the class, I think. I’m not very good, but that’s okay. It’s hard the first day – I wanted to be good, and I almost cried, but I keep trying and then it’s relaxing and it’s fun. Whether I show my work to other people or not is up to me.

Rosemaling, however, is something I’ve gotten more serious about. I’ve taken a lot of Vesterheim classes from a lot of the Vesterheim Gold Medalists. I was here in June taking a class with Nancy Odalen. We toured the archives like we do in most classes. The difference this time was that I took time to take a lot of pictures in the collection storage and challenged myself to take them home and actually paint something based on those designs. I haven’t entered in competition yet, but I wanted to start practicing doing that, so I’m excited that I actually made items from those designs and interpretations of the designs. My painting was a lot of what I learned from Nancy in that class. She told us that it was okay to make mistakes and there are ways to fix them. She said it doesn’t have to be exact like what you see in the old Norwegian paintings – it’s more capturing the essence of them and making them into something that’s more your own. It was a really fun little exercise, and I’m really proud to show the photos now of what I saw versus what I did later.

Vesterheim has been a key for my wellbeing. It’s been a hard year for me, and art is something that’s helped. I’ve also taken classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina but it’s a plane ride away, living in Iowa City. Having Vesterheim here in Iowa, a three-hour drive, is great. It’s such a nice little restful island to come to and, while it’s close to home, I feel like I’m a whole world away for two or three days. The instructors are such friendly and helpful and encouraging people. I talk to people all the time who say, “I should do a class, I always wanted to do that.” I say, “Just do it, whether you think you’re going to be good at it or not – give it a try. It’s worth it!”