Joe Baltich can paint the story of his family’s history on the southern shores of Jasper Lake back to the first cabin at Northwind Lodge in 1939. Same with the history of the Boundary Waters that border the Ely resort on three sides.
He’ll happily tell the stories of the last 86 years, but you don’t have to look much further than the walls of the resort office or the side of a canoe that occupies the middle of the room to realize that Baltich has literally painted much of that history.
The Northwind Lodge and Fernberg Gallery, located at 2267 Fernberg Road in Ely, is a family owned and operated summer vacation resort with eight cabins available to rent. It also offers fishing boat, pontoon boat and aluminum canoe rentals during stays.
Joe and his brother, Bernie, run the resort today.
“My grandfather built the first cabin, and when my dad was 12, they started renting the cabin and built a little place to stay in,” Joe said. “Then they added many cabins over the years and became a resort.”
The longtime family-owned business, serviced by Lake Country Power, falls perfectly into the mission of the Member Made Initiative.
Today, Northwind Lodge operates almost exclusively as a resort, but it's also home to Baltich’s artistic endeavor as a painter who brings his lifetime in the wilderness to a canvas, along with his ventures into abstract and contemporary pieces.
“One thing I'm noticing with art is I don't have to have it fit,” Baltich said. “I can change my art. So I can fit the times and I can fit specific, really specific stuff if I need to, which is great.”
An interest in art was burned into Baltich at a young age at Northwind Lodge, and the end of the resort’s retail days helped spark a new fire that would lead him into commission work, public art and becoming one of more well-known artists of the region.
He was 13 years old when they bought their dad a woodburning set that would burn a stamp on a wooden board. It underwhelmed and Baltich took on himself to draw his own design on the wood, burn it on and he eventually started selling pieces from the resort office.
On a chance meeting, an art instructor from Arkansas visited Northwind Lodge and told the young Baltich he needed to start painting. She brought him a black lake rock that on one side was just the rock’s original surface.
“I turned it over and there's this beautiful painting of a deer in the wintertime, with his antlers on and a multicolored sky and I'm like ‘Ooh my god, that was beautiful.’” he recalled. “She's said ‘That's going to be your inspiration to start painting.’”
It was, and Baltich went to the art supplies store in Ely, bought $7 worth of paint and a $16 easel that still resides on the second floor of the resort’s office, and later built a makeshift studio outside. He taught himself to paint, went to college and earned money through commission work and then he just stopped.
“I lost my mojo,” he said, and didn’t touch a brush for more than 30 years.
Fast forward to 2015, with things still trudging along from the economic downturn, one of the resort employees told Baltich he should paint a chair for a city of Ely auction and tourism promotion.
“I got it sitting right here and I go ‘Well, I'm gonna do a moose.’ So I painted a moose and the moose came right out of my brush like ‘Where have you been?!’” he said. “It was the top one that they auctioned off.”
Still reeling from the retail downturn in 2016, he painted his most talked about work — a canoe that features scenes of the Boundary Waters on one side and a history of the wilderness region on the other. It gave him something interesting to do at a time when he was feeling depressed.
The canoe itself is also rich in Northwind Lodge history.
Canoes blow away in the wind, he explained, and one year an employee stacked five canoes on the frozen beach landing of Jasper Lake. Baltich came out and found them in a heap about 600 feet off shore, but one was missing.
Joe and his dad tried chiseling it out and using an ice auger to find it, but never did. When the lake thawed out, they found it dashed on the shore with a small hole in the bottom.
So I had the hole welded and everything was fine, except I couldn't sell this canoe. Everybody said it's going to detonate when it touches the water, so I said screw it, I'm gonna paint this,” he said. “That's why I painted it, because it lived an entire winter under the ice, and that’s pretty cool.”
Painting takes up most of Baltich’s time today. He commissions and sells work from Northwind Lodge and online, and has pieces at a studio in Ely proper. On larger paintings, he’ll spend more than 100 hours on a piece
He’s currently starting to gear up for the 2024 Ely Stone Stash, where painted rocks are hidden around the city for people to find. The MEA weekend event draws in tourists from all over the U.S., last year bringing about 500 people to Ely to find the hidden stones. This year, he expects to have 185 hidden — 120 painted by Baltich and 60 from other artists.
“This is my ninth one and it's getting bigger and bigger,” Baltich said.
About
Northwind Lodge and Fernberg Gallery are located at 2267 Fernberg Road in Ely. The resort is open during the summer from mid-May to late September. Availability and reservations can be made at www.visitnorthwind.com or by calling 218-365-5489. The Fernberg Gallery is located at the lodge, where you can view the Boundary Waters canoe and purchase Joe’s art.
Joe Baltich Art is online at www.joebaltichart.com. Some prints and originals are available for purchase online. Joe can be contacted at joe.baltich@gmail.com.