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The creator of a softcover book just released in March finds sketching barns of the  St. Croix Valley to be satisfying and meditative. The book is just part of spreading the-gospel-of-sketching that goes beyond books for Jim Lammers.  

He resides on a farmstead south of Lindstrom and also teaches sketching at Marine Mills Folk Art School. 

The book features a few old barns you will definitely recognize if you navigate the local back roads.  While it will serve as a documentation of these landmarks the book also tells of the settlers and families attached to  certain barns.

 

Sketching is one of those perfectly imperfect pursuits and barns are good subjects because they can be put on paper roughly and rapidly and the fine points filled in later. But Lammers wasn’t one to do just 200 drawings and an intro.  He also opted to compile a history of farming locally from the 1860’s to 1960’s,  which is when he feels the most notable evolution and advancements arose in agriculture.

The historic angle comes naturally to Lammers, whose mother Evelyn Sellman and family had a place near modern day Peterson Companies headquarters, east of Wyoming.  The barn sketch on the cover of Lammers’s book (left) depicts the original Peterson barn, he said.

His grandfather Charles Sellman was born (probably not in a barn) on a farmstead just north of Center City.

As an architect Lammers used freehand drawings to fleshout ideas and his first book was Capture the Moment: An Architect’s Guide to Travel Sketching.

“You just gotta love those old barns,” he states, he can’t help himself. 

The 152 page Barns of the St Croix Valley is available through ORO Editions call 1-415-883-3300 or see the website www.oroeditions. com.

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