Hi All,
Just thought I’d send out a general 2020 wrap-up email to all our donors, advocates, volunteers and artists. It was a year quite unlike any other we’ve encountered! It’s forced us to re-evaluate and then make decisions that we thought would never be ours to initiate.
We had a great deal planned for 2020 and only a small portion of that came to fruition, however, plans are again being made and once it is safe for us to re-open our doors, you will be able to get re-involved. It’s been a difficult year financially, with all our income streams stopped, but still being responsible for facility costs and other overheads, it’s been quite the balancing act. Thank you to all those that made donations throughout the year, without you, it would have been so much more of a struggle.
January brought us cold and snow and with it our Photography Show.
During March, we hosted The Green Show, which was generously sponsored by Great River Energy. We also had some artwork from North Hennepin Community College.
Late March to current time, unfortunately we had to temporarily close. We also had to cancel the Arbor Lakes Art Fair. All these decisions are not ones that took lightly, but obviously the health and well-being of our artists, guests, volunteers and donors superseded all other considerations.
We’ve kept in touch via Zoom this year and in fact our Writers’ Studio continues to meet every Wednesday via video conferencing. We have increased our group membership and just published our second anthology, which is available on Amazon.
2019 was our inaugural Jacob Beneke Scholarship donation and we were planning the same event for May 2020, which we had to cancel. We are again in the planning stages for a Virtual 2021 Scholarship and District 279 Student Art Show. Please help us by donating today to this important program. This annual award, is given to a 12th grade student, preparing to study for an arts degree.
The Arbor Lakes Art Fair was canceled in 2020, but we are planning for an event this coming July 17th & 18th 2021. With the wonderful support of The Shoppes at Arbor Lakes, we will be able to offer Early Bird pricing once again The application will be available online in early January.
Tom Sack, one of the “regular and loved” artists.
We’ve continued to strengthen our board and we are truly looking forward to seeing you all again in the not too distant future.
So, as stated earlier we could not have survived 2020 without our donors, advocates, artists and volunteers. So, if you enjoyed all that Maple Grove Arts Center produced and shared with you in the past, please consider us for your year-end donation giving. We have two main donation programs; our General Fund and The Jacob Beneke Fund. The choice is yours!
Thank you so much for your generosity and we all wish you a Happy & Safe New Year!
Lise Spence-Parsons
President & Treasurer
763 607 3824
All images courtesy of John Maciejny - Natural Images