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Art can cure cabin fever
By Pat Boyd, Executive Director, South Dakotans for
the Arts
South Dakotans find many ways to enjoy winter—after all, it is our longest season! Lots of us love the winter sports that get folks out of the house to enjoy life during the cold months, but what can you do if you’re not a skiier, an ice fisherman or a snowmobile trail rider? Fortunately, the arts put on quite a show during the winter. There are so many ways to enrich your life—there is excitement happening near you!
This is a major season for artist-in-communities residencies. Professional
artists spend an extended period of time working with students, talking about
how they create art and providing the kind of hands-on training that can mean
everything to a budding artist. These resident artists frequently offer
community workshops, public displays or performances by students based on new
skills learned during the residency. Go. Watch. Enjoy.
Winter is also a great time for plays. High school and college. Touring groups.
Little theaters. Dinner theaters. A glance in any newspaper will assure you that
theater is alive and well in South Dakota. Laugh. Cry. Applaud.
Another great winter escape is taking the family to a museum. You don’t have to
travel to Minneapolis or Kansas City or Omaha to see wonderful art exhibits.
From Rapid City to Sioux Falls and Aberdeen to Vermillion, there is an art
museum near your home—with changing exhibits which present a rainbow of artistic
styles and tastes. Come in from the cold—and get inside a painting. See
sculpture from every angle. You may be amazed at the range of art available in a
museum close to you.
Perhaps the best way to cure cabin fever is to make art. If you play a musical
instrument, now is the time to remember how good it can feel to create music.
Learn to paint, carve wood, sing with your family. Our ancestors gathered around
the piano, the banjo and the fiddle during the long winter nights and had fun
together—why not try that today? Or take up a pen and start a journal—you may be
creating a story that others would love to share. Winter is a perfect time to
discover the art around us AND the art inside us.
For more about the arts in South
Dakota, visit www.sdarts.org, a joint website of South Dakotans for the Arts and
the South Dakota Arts Council.