And if the water goes over a falls the sound is an attraction. Gathered on Nicollet Island near St. Anthony Falls on a sunny late May day, about a dozen artists with styles seeming to range from paint by numbers to Picasso, enjoy a cornucopia of visual and environmental choices. Easels and sketch-pads quickly come out, with their owners jumping to work with watercolors, oils, or penciled sketches. Some focus on fast-moving waters and mist rising over the limestone ledge in front of them. Others take aim at the Post Office or other modern buildings lining the opposite shore.
Art history is clearly also an inspiration to some.
It's just center of life and community. I guess that's what draws us. Nearby, Wayne Howell is working on a painting of the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. He has already done commissioned works on the old Hennepin Bridge, the Stone Arch and other Mississippi trestles. If you went out in the country now it'd just be all green.