Earth Clay Goes to Acadia - Field Notes

We stayed at the Moorings Inn in one of their quiet cottages in Southwest Harbor & listened to Noah Kahan the entire time which is basically an unwritten rule. Weirdly enough, even though the fall foliage was just getting to its peak, the seaside villages were winding down for the season so crowds were minimal & the atmosphere was calm & cozy pretty much everywhere we went!

•We rented E-bikes from Island Bike Rental in northeast harbor, pedaled a short distance til we were in the park where we got onto the Carriage roads & meandered through the whole park. This was the best way to see Acadia in all of its fall glory, plus no cars are allowed on the carriage roads which made it a completely stress free ride! We did a half-day rental instead of the full-day.

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•We tried to go whale watching via the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Co. but our tour got canceled due to weather so we hopped on the Miss Samantha where we learned how to lobster fish and got to view all kinds of sea life like eiders, porpoise, and seals instead! This company has all kinds of different tours so even if something doesn’t work out you should be able to get in on a different activity if you want! (Plus Bar Harbor is such a cute town, if you have to wait for your tour, you’ll love all of the shops & food options here… I’m still thinking about the Maple Nut cake donut from Graffiti Donuts)

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•We did a variety of hikes, some into the mountainy hills (loved Beech Mountain West Ridge Loop), & some along the sea (loved The Great Head Trail). My favorite was Jordan Pond Carry to Eagle Lake because I’ve been sculpting the view at the top for years & it was epic to finally see it in person.

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•Jordan fished at Compass Harbor along the rocky seaside & it was pretty epic. He caught a few mackerel which we ate… 10/10 recommend!

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•The first time we ate Lobster we went to Abel’s which was great! …But the lobster we got straight off the boat & steamed over our campfire was the highlight of my trip! 🦞

Star Tribune Article

https://www.startribune.com/seeing-our-national-parks-inspired-a-rural-minnesota-woman-to-recreate-them-in-miniature/600377560/

Visiting our national parks inspired a rural Minnesota woman to re-create them in miniature.

With clay, she sculpts striking vistas on pendants the size of a penny.  

She always begins with a smoosh of her thumb.

Grace Vanderbush flattens a ball of polymer clay the color of the sky onto a round brass pendant. Then she starts to layer and sculpt a tiny scene — creating a wearable landscape the size of a penny.

Vanderbush creates clay necklaces depicting miniature scenes from each of the country's 63 national parks. She also sculpts pendants featuring bison the size of a ladybug, mini flower arrangements and scenes from U.S. Park Service locales like Wisconsin's Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. She sells her artworks online and at her Earth Clay booth in art fairs in Minnesota and across the U.S.

(Earth Clay's upcoming Minnesota stops are Minnehaha Falls Art Fair, July 19-21, and the Minnesota State Fair, Aug 22.-Sept. 2.)

With her husband, Jordan, Vanderbush has visited about half of the country's national parks, and they plan to cross more off their list each year. During their hikes, she snaps photos of vistas and closeups of rocks and wildflowers. Back at her home studio near rural Canby, Minn., she uses the photos for inspiration.

Her workbench is next to wide windows looking out onto the flat fields of this farm country near the South Dakota border. Tiny balls of colorful clay are scattered within reach and images of iconic park scenes are usually propped nearby.

Sense of place

Vanderbush's national park landscape necklaces feature specific plants, rock formations, and color palettes, making the small scene instantly familiar to anyone who's visited the park. She layers clay in the exact colors of Badlands National Park's striated pinnacles at sunset and sculpts Arches National Park's famous "delicate arch" in miniature, giving it a ¼-inch span.

She tries to tease out the smallest details of each park's ecosystem, she said.

"I think it really gives my work a sense of place," she said. "I will sculpt the mountain that you know — the iconic scene — but the texture might match the moss on a rock that you see on the hike."

To create texture, she pokes with dental scalers and scrapes with ceramic tools to make a bison's fur look fluffy or get a rocky shoreline to come to life.

For the parks the Vanderbushes haven't crossed off their list yet — like Alaska's wild Gates of the Arctic or the desert of White Sands in New Mexico — she relies on photos she finds in books and online. Earth Clay donates 10% of all national park artwork profits to the National Park Foundation, and some park stores sell the necklaces.

"We had always dreamed of visiting all the national parks," Vanderbush said. "And just making travel more of a goal of ours — because we didn't really get to do that growing up."

So far, her favorite national park is Grand Teton in Wyoming.

"That is just such a special place," she said. "It's just magical. It has the valleys and the open prairie areas that we really like because we live in the Minnesota prairie, but then there's just a huge mountain range, too."

An unlikely trail

Vanderbush can't remember a time that she wasn't making art. She brought her creations to the county fair as a member of 4-H and carried a set of markers with her everywhere.

"I always had a backpack full of art supplies," she said.

She left Canby to study art education at South Dakota State University in Brookings, where she met Jordan. The couple built a house down the road from where she grew up. Now they embrace small-town joys like Monday pizza nights at P.K. Egans on St. Olaf Avenue, Canby's main street, and are working to conserve and transform their land by planting grass and trees in a former cornfield.

Vanderbush was working as a substitute teacher when she created her initial clay necklace design, inspired by a visit to Arizona's Saguaro National Park.

As her art business, which she started in 2018, took off, she stopped teaching to create full-time. Soon, her engineer husband left his job to become Earth Clay's logistics guy and display builder.

As they travel to art fairs across the Midwest this summer, Vanderbush brings supplies along to work on her miniature clay sculptures at her booth. Invariably, someone at every fair will make note of the tiny, detailed work and make a familiar comment: "You're going to go blind!" Vanderbush said. (She doesn't notice any eye strain.)

The Vanderbushes love the travel and freedom that comes with their art fair life. And they love coming home to Canby — even though what they do can seem a little mysterious to neighbors in a place where most work as farmers or teachers, they said.

"At church, a guy was asking me, 'What do you do?' because I hadn't seen him in a while," Grace Vanderbush said. "And I was like, 'I'm an artist.' " He didn't understand what she meant, and asked: "An or-tist? What does an or-tist do?" she recalled. "He made up a word, because that would be more likely than 'artist,'" she said.

It may not be typical, but Vanderbush's path brings lots of joy. It leads her from chasing waterfalls in places like Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park back to her Canby kitchen, where she bakes batches of her clay sculptures in the oven to finish them.

And then she's off to the next art fair.

By Erica Pearson Star Tribune

JULY 1, 2024

PBS Postcards

PBS Postcards Earth Clay Episode

The first time Dana Conroy reached out to me I thought it was spam because I didn't believe PBS actually wanted to interview us...so I ignored the message! I IGNORED THE MESSAGE (insert head clunk). I guess my Arthur-obsessed inner-child just couldn't fathom it. Thankfully, Dana reached out again & I decided I should at least respond this time, & I am really glad I did. Working with the PBS Postcards team was a highlight of 2023 for us. They focus on the artists & culture in Minnesota & they are so gifted at what they do! If you watch any of the seasons you'll be amazed at all of the cool things happening in good ol' MN. Thank you SO much for watching, exposure like this means the world to us!!

https://video.pioneer.org/video/clay-artist-letterpress-printing-portrait-artist-nfvzvj/