Old Fashioned 4th of July

Tuesday, July 4th

Make plans to attend Lindsborg's Old Fashioned 4th of July celebration in Swensson Park! Celebrate Independence Day with fun, food, and local entertainment on Tuesday, July 4th.

Beginning at 5:00pm, children and families are invited to meet at Swensson Park (located in the 400 block of North Main Street) gazebo to decorate strollers, wagons, bikes, etc. for the Patriotic Parade that will kick-off the evening's program. Some décor will be provided to dress up that bicycle or wagon, but feel free to bring your own as well.

Smoky Valley High School Theater will be offering concessions starting at

5:00 pm. They will have hot dog and hamburger meals, popcorn, root beer floats and more for purchase.

A patriotic program starts at 6:00pm in the bandshell and includes several local and regional performers, from twirlers to dancers to musicians. Finally, the Lindsborg Community Band plays, ending festivities by 8:30pm.

All events are FREE and open to the public. Bleacher seating is available. Lawn chairs and blankets are encouraged.

Pie and Ice Cream Social

Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center

July 14

Art, music, and delicious pies on the lawn of the Red Barn Studio Museum--sounds like a perfect summer evening!

Consider participating in the Pie Contest. For a $5 entry fee, showcase your pie baking skill and compete for a chance to win the grand prize of $100. Only 100% homemade pies are allowed. The entry form can be found here.

• Registration submission deadline: July 12.
• Pie drop-off deadline: 4:00pm, July 14
• Judging: 5:00-6:00pm, July 14
• Winners announced at the Pie Social

Pie Social FAQs:

• Do I have to enter the contest to get free pie? No--bring a homemade pie to the event. For each pie you contribute, you will receive two slices of pie along with homemade ice cream.
• How does one get free pie and ice cream? Drop off your pie at the Red Barn Studio Museum, and you will be given tickets to exchange for a slice of pie and ice cream. The more pies you bring, the more free pie you can savor!
• Do I have to bring a pie? No--pie will be available for a $5 donation per slice and homemade ice cream for a donation of $2.

Enjoy a tasty fundraiser celebrating the art of pie making! Whether you participate in the contest or simply indulge in delectable pies, the Pie Social promises an evening of sweet delights and delightful camaraderie.

Proceeds from the event go to benefit the Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center. Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center hours are Friday - Sunday, 1:00pm-5:00pm. Location is 114 1/2 South Main Street. Smoky Valley Arts & Folklife Center is supported by the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Raymer Society.

Christmas in July!

July 15

The heat got you down? Get chilled by celebrating Christmas in July in Lindsborg!

Enjoy a variety of activities and multiple holiday parties downtown during the day, including:



• In-store specials
• Photo op with Summer Santa (who will be visiting Lindsborg during his vacation!)
• Gift basket drawing for those who dress for the season in Hawaiian garb with a holiday flair

The weatherman is even predicting "snow" in Swensson Park! Kids ages 2-12 can join in the fun (swimsuit and goggles recommended).

Come join in the seasonal unseasonal fun! More information can be found at Visit Lindsborg.

Kathy Petersen, Artist in Residence

Red Barn Studio Museum

July 1-7

Step into the world of artist Katie Petersen as she explores the fascinating topic of movement within the perception of time. Petersen will showcase her paintings in oil, watercolor, and alcohol inks while being the artist-in-residence at the Red Barn Studio Museum. She creates these paintings by taking frames from videos and putting them together like puzzles.

During Petersen's time at the Red Barn Studio Museum, she will host a watercolor and drawing workshop called Mindfulness and watercolor. In the workshop, Petersen will be guiding participants in exploring the at of painting moving subjects. Through a demonstration and short lecture, Petersen will show how to paint or draw from a video reference, capturing the essence of motion in artwork. The workshop will be held July 5 and 6 from 5:30-7:30pm. Cost of the workshop is $15 for members or $20 for non-members. Contact Red Barn Studio Museum for registering.

The Red Barn Studio Museum's residency program is sponsored in part by the Kansas Creative Arts Industry Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Red Barn Studio Museum is located at 212 South Main Street and is open Tuesday-Friday, 10:00am-5:00pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1:00pm-5:00pm, and by appointment. Please call (785) 227-2217 to schedule an appointment.

Lindsborg Bikeshare

Bikes for Rent

The City of Lindsborg is excited to announce a partnership with the Occupational Center of Central Kansas (OCCK) to bring Lindsborg Bikeshare to the city!

Bikeshare will promote health and wellbeing, active transportation, bike tourism, and Swedish heritage (be sure to check out those license plates). Three stations with 15 bikes for rent are located within the city at strategic points.

• North: near Bethany College adjacent to the Välkommen Trail and Gregory Hall
• Central: in the parking lot east of City Hall (104 East Lincoln Street)
• South: next to the new Fredrickson Family Fitness Park (412 South 2nd Street)

The bikes will be for rent, either by the hour or with a $30 annual pass (discount available for students 18+ years). The bicycles are easily rented through the Movatic smartphone app whether you are a resident or a visitor. All proceeds will benefit the children and adults who receive disability services through OCCK.

Thanks to community partners Bethany College, Lindsborg Community Hospital, and Smoky Valley Public Schools for contributing funds to this new and exciting program!

Programs for All

Lindsborg Community Library

Check out the Lindsborg Community Library for interesting programs for all ages!

Thursday, July 13, 6:00pm: A special session of Zoos to You for the grownups! Rolling Hills Zoo will be bringing information and animals as they discuss Life on the Prairie.

Saturday, July 15, 10:30am: Join the presentation, Kansas Music History, to learn about traditions, styles, and musicians from Territorial Kansas through the age of radio. This event is a part of Humanities Kansas and is given by Derrick Doty.

For a list of everything going on at the library this month including the Summer Reading Program and activities for children, go to Lindsborg Community Library's Facebook page or call 785-227-2710. Lindsborg Community Library is located at 111 South Main Street.

Brigadoon

Broadway RFD - July 21, 22, 28, 29

Broadway RFD, the longest running outdoor theater in Kansas, provides a great musical production under the stars each July.

Get your tickets for the 2023 performances of Brigadoon on the Broadway RFD website. Ticket sales available online July 1.

• General Admission: $20 (online or cash/check at The Good Merchant)

• Children 12 years and younger: $10 (online or cash/check at The Good Merchant)

• VIP tickets: $30 (a provided seat in the first 3 rows--online purchase only)

Smoky Valley Theater will be hosting the concession stand as a fundraiser for their upcoming show season. Broadway RFD performs in the bandshell at Swensson Park, located in the 400 block of North Main Street.

Laura Baker, Pie Baker Lady

Artists in Residence at the Red Barn Studio Museum

July 8-16

Laura Baker returns to the Red Barn Studio Museum, July 8-16, with plans to continue working on illustrations for Pie as Art, Volume 2. For fans of the Pie Baker Lady, the book is more than halfway completed with illustrations for the 36 new recipes.

Recipes come from various sources such as family, friends, and favorite out-of-print cookbooks, and each recipe is tested by Baker to get them just right. Along with illustrations, Baker will also be testing some recipes in house! Perhaps you will visit at just the right time to offer an opinion on a fresh baked pie!

A few of the illustrations Baker will be working on while at the Red Barn are Mandarin Orange Cheesecake, Sour Cream Lemon Pie, Hazelnut Chocolate Tart, Blackberry Rhubarb, and Pie Crust Cookies. Illustrations from Pie as Art, Volume 1 will also be on display.

The Red Barn Studio Museum's residency program is sponsored in part by the Kansas Creative Arts Industry Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Red Barn Studio Museum is located at 212 South Main Street and is open Tuesday-Friday, 10:00am-5:00pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1:00pm-5:00pm, and by appointment. Please call (785) 227-2217 to schedule an appointment.

Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center

Workshops Galore!

The Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center is aiming to fill your summer with workshop opportunities! Check out this list and register for the ones that encourage your creativity!

• Saturday Morning Makers: Held the first Saturday of the month for children in grades 1-4. Registration required for the 10:00am-12:00pm classes.
• Third Thursdays: Adults are welcome to attend without registering! A suggested $5 donation is appreciated for the creative space provided 6:00-9:00pm workshop.
• Petroglyph Collagraph Printmaking: Marsha Howe leads students in grades 1-4 for this workshop held on July 10. Register here.
• Wet Felting Small Vessel: Debbie Wagner leads this class for ages 15 to adult on July 15. The class lasts all day beginning at 9:00am with a lunch break. Registration is required.
• Getting Started with Collage: Shawn Delker will lead this 2-day workshop on July 24 and 25 from 6:30-8:30pm. Register here.
• Barn Quilt Painting: Get registered early for this August 1 workshop from 6:00-9:00pm. This class is led by Karna Peterson for adults 21+ with registration required.

Smoky Valley Arts and Folklife Center hours are Friday - Sunday, 1:00pm-5:00pm. Location is 114 1/2 South Main Street. Smoky Valley Arts & Folklife Center is supported by the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Raymer Society.

Red Barn Studio Museum

Artists-in-Residence, Dawne Leiker and VAAM

Artwork by Jill Brax--VAAM artist

Dawne Leiker will be the Artist-in-Residence July 20-22. Leiker is a former jounalist with a talent for writing captivating stories. Her work has been published in many places like Moving Force Journal and Liquid Imagination.

While at the museum, Leiker will work on her fantasy novel, The Legend of Askblod. The Legend of Askblod is an exciting story about a brave woman who has a mysterious connection to nature and whose fate becomes entangled with that of the god of the underworld. Her misfortunes soon become those of her fellow villagers when she inadvertently unleashes a dreadful plague.

The McPherson Arts Alliance Artists, previously known as the VAAM Gallery Artists, will be returning for their 21st annual residency at the Red Barn Studio Museum, July 23-29. The artists will work simultaneously in a variety of mediums. Each artist brings unique interests and styles. Their yearly residency provides excellent time for camaraderie and sharing of ideas.

The Red Barn Studio Museum's residency program is sponsored in part by the Kansas Creative Arts Industry Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Red Barn Studio Museum is located at 212 South Main Street and is open Tuesday-Friday, 10:00am-5:00pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1:00pm-5:00pm, and by appointment. Please call (785) 227-2217 to schedule an appointment.

Birger Sandzén Gallery

Through August 6

Five new exhibitions open at the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery on June 18 and continue through August 6. The shows include Mexican art from the Moffett Collection; paintings and prints by Doug Osa of Olathe; art by Kelly Yarbrough and Clive Fullagar of Manhattan; and mixed media works by Ellinwood artist Robert Joy, who passed away this past March. The opening reception for the exhibitions will be on Sunday, June 18 from 2:00-4:00pm, with artist talks at 2:30pm.

Drawing on work from the James and Virginia Moffett Collection, Power to the People explores the political and social conditions of early-20th-century Mexico and the dynamic, groundbreaking art that emerged from the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920). This period of war and dramatic social upheaval witnessed a flowering of artistic production, particularly in printmaking and graphic arts. Mexico’s long printmaking tradition dates to the late 1500s. Artists such as José Guadalupe Posada, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros – icons of Mexican modernism – drew on those traditions and everyday imagery to create new messages of social justice meant to appeal directly to the working classes in the Mexican provinces. The exhibition is curated by Cori Sherman North from the Sandzén Gallery and her husband Bill North of the Clara Hatton Center.

Quiet Perceptions features the art of Kansas native and Olathe resident Doug Osa (see above: Weavers Crossing). Early in his career, he began working directly from both urban and rural landscape settings. His choice of subjects are not so much sought after as they are discovered, sometimes in the most unlikely places. This selective process often takes place through multiple visits to painting locations throughout the seasons and years. His desire is to seek the underlying order and beauty of those things observed and to capture that “sense of place” in those observations. His work is especially appreciated for its meticulous detail and coloration and is included in private, corporate and institutional collections nationwide.

Manhattan, Kansas, artist Kelly Yarbrough's practice is rooted in an ecosystem that includes mixed media drawing, arts administration, and creating meaningful opportunities for humans to engage with their environment. She writes, "My art focuses on the prairie ecosystem and presenting views of place through an ever-expanding library of my lived experiences. The tallgrass prairie is called the most altered landscape on the planet, yet grasslands tell incredible stories of human history and their re-establishment can offer hope for the future of life in the Great Plains. The work in Folkways is new and a detour from the largely abstracted style that I've been working with for the past ten years. I wanted to more directfully (but playfully) represent people, actions, and traditions that I've encountered along the way while living in Kansas. Folkways are defined as learned behaviors, shared by a social group, built up without conscious design but serving as compelling guides of conduct."

Since emigrating from South Africa to Kansas in 1988, most of Clive Fullagar's work has been derived from his love of the Flint Hills. He has been very fortunate to be able to record both the dramatic and subtle changes to the landscape brought about by the seasons, weather, light, and human impact. Sometimes these changes are fleeting, occurring in minutes and requiring a continuous presence in place. Fullagar writes, "Most of the work that I am presenting in Finding Roots: Divisionism Revisited is based on the root systems of trees left stranded on a man-made beach in the Tuttle Cove area near Manhattan. The pieces use mixed media and digital tools to explore Divisionism, a style which Birger Sandzén explored through paint. Divisionism emphasized the separation of color into individual shapes or strokes of pigment to enhance the effect of light. The divergence in our work lies in the means and process by which we achieve luminosity." Whereas much of Sandzén’s work used a panoramic view of the landscape, Fullagar adopts a more microscopic lens to expose the intimate structure of the land.

Robert Joy (1943-2023) was an icon in the Great Bend art scene for many years and developed a dedicated following throughout the region. Although he lived in Ellinwood, he regularly commuted to his workspace at Petr's Frame House and later the Shafer Gallery at Barton Community College. He developed his well-known style with the realization that drawing is a lot like writing, "I hadn’t gone to college to hone my handwriting skills, but it was certainly my own style and I didn’t have to work at anything special to produce it. I just moved my pen on a paper and there it was without the slightest effort. Why couldn’t I just do the same thing in drawing and painting? So I just simply started drawing and all the magic began to happen. My brain, with all its crazy way of seeing things, just locked on to that freedom and off I went." His uniquely framed subject matter ranges from cats and nature to his experiences in the Vietnam War and more.

The Sandzén Gallery is located at 401 North First Street in Lindsborg. Hours are 10:00am-5:00pm Tuesday through Saturday, and 1:00pm-5:00pm on Sunday. Admission is free, with donations appreciated. Docent tours for groups are available by two-week advance appointment. For more information about Birger Sandzén, the Gallery, and these exhibitions visit the Gallery's website or phone (785) 227-2220.

Politics in the 1800s

Smoky Valley Historical Association Program

July 11

Armed people stormed the capitol with the belief that the election was stolen. A recent headline? It happened in Kansas in 1894. Learn about this often forgotten part of Kansas politics of the 1800s, along with other stories, like the Kansas governor who, in fear for his life, fled the state in disguise at night.

John Burchill will be presenting this topic for the Smoky Valley Historical Association on July 11. Burchill is a retired Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Kansas Wesleyan University, Salina, with graduate degrees from Emporia State and Wichita State Universities. He is a speaker with Humanities Kansas. Burchill also authored the book Bullets, Badges and Bridles – Horse Thieves and the Societies That Pursued Them.

The program takes place at Messiah Lutheran Church Fellowship Hall located at 402 North First Street on Tuesday, July 11 at 7:30pm. Please enter through the east door on the north side of the building.

Main Street Galleria

New Programs

Irene at Main Street Galleria has multiple offerings for those interested in learning new art skills, a tea destination, and unique art purchases.

The Heartland Porcelain Art School continues to accept students in porcelain painting, polymer and metal clay sculpting, wire-wrapping, and all things with rosemaling Scandinavian folk art. According to Rosemaling Classes, "Rosemaling is the decorative folk art of rural Norway that flourished in the 1700's and 1800's (see an example of rosemaling above)."

For a unique tea experience in the Casual Corner Tearoom, schedule a reservation with Irene. With 24-hour notice, she can prepare a wonderful experience for 2-16 guests.

Historical Echoes, first-person performances of historical figures, can also be scheduled for groups and special events for either an Afternoon Tea or a Cream Tea. On July 23, Irene will be performing as Margaret Sanger.

Also available at Main Street Galleria is Irene's custom calligraphy and hand-made greeting cards. These are also available online, at White's Foodliner in Lindsborg, the Hutchinson Art Center in Hutchinson, Kansas and at the Carriage Factory Art Gallery in Newton, Kansas.

As always, imported teas are always available online or in store. Standard special selections include American Chai, Prince Henry, and other favorites that have been purchased by her loyal customers since 1995.

Find all needed information on Main Street Galleria's Facebook page, including the new website (currently under construction), how to make reservations, and cost for tea events.

Main Street Galleria is located at 126 North Main Street Irene can be contacted for questions at 785-493-5246.

Smoky Valley Classic Car Show

Saturday, August 5 - Register EARLY!

Over 100 classic automobiles will inhabit the shade-filled Swensson Park on Saturday, August 5. Be sure to register today to have a spot for your vehicle!

Awards given include: Best Club Participation for the largest paid registration from a single Club and the Long-Haul Award for the furthest distance traveled by the car. Popular awards are Police Chief’s Choice and Sheriff’s Choice for the cars most likely to be stopped by those agencies, and the Kansas Highway Patrol award for the car most likely to be stopped for no reason at all!

Registration begins at 8:00am, judging is from 10:00am-2:30pm, and awards will be given out from 3:00-3:30pm. Dash plaques will be given to the first 125 entries.

Swensson Park is located in the 400 block of North Main Street.

Entry form available here. Registration deadline is August 3.

Check Visit Lindsborg for lodging information as well as dining options.

Dröm Sött Inn - Sweet Dreams Inn

"I highly recommend this charming small boutique hotel. The room and property were clean; the bed comfortable; shower pressure good; the breakfast (either Swedish or American choices) excellent - all the things necessary for a good night were great. But the thing that sets Dröm Sött apart is the cheerful, welcoming staff in the beautiful Swedish setting. It just makes you feel good and happy to have stayed there." ~ William C.

Find links to your favorite overnight stays here.