Curtis and the giant pencil

Curtis Ingvoldstad (BA in Art, ’01) never could have imagined what his future held. Who could? Who would? 

There he was… is… each year for the last five years on the first Saturday in June, standing high atop scaffolding in front of a crowd of nearly 10,000, using a giant pencil sharpener to sharpen a 20-foot-tall yellow No. 2 pencil he carved from a tree trunk with a chainsaw. 

Below him, people cheer and dance. The University of Minnesota Pep Band rallies the crowd. Some people are dressed as pencils. Many in the crowd are children, delighted in the spectacle of it all, the absurdity, the carefree fun — along with parents who remember their own days in the classroom, where the No. 2 pencil was at the root of it all. 

Dozens of stories have been written about the Lake of the Isles (LOTI) Pencil phenomenon. Even now, a short documentary is making the film festival rounds; having recently won best documentary short at the renowned Santa Barbara International Film Festival. 

What started in a storm when the crown of an old bur oak was torn from its trunk — where it has stood rooted for nearly two centuries on the front lawn of a home owned by John and Amy Higgins (who commissioned the pencil and create the event) on the shore of Minneapolis’ Lake of the Isles — has turned into a story that keeps growing, and giving. 

“It's kind of crazy,” says Ingvoldstad. “But the people that show up are these warm-hearted human beings that just love this idea of coming together. There's something magical in it. It's just wonderful to be part of that.”

His path didn’t always lead here.

Becoming an artist

For a long time, Ingvoldstad struggled to see himself as an artist.

“My fear of being an artist might be rooted in the fact that it's just who I am and deep down, it's that fear of failure that everybody has,” he says.

Instead, Ingvoldstad pursued an engineering degree at Iowa State, “but I just didn't want to be there anymore and I didn't want to be an engineer.” 

He found himself back in Minnesota, with the state’s flagship University of Minnesota nearby, so he took another crack at it. 

“I tried to remain slightly technical, so I went into architecture,” he says. “But I took a lot of art classes in the meantime. I studied drawing and painting and I did a lot of performance art and a little bit of sculpture. 

“I had an art teacher at the U who asked me, ‘Have you ever considered being an artist?’ And I always said no, because you can't make a living at it. And then life kept throwing these things at me.” 

He left the University a few credits shy of a degree. For a decade, he worked in video production to pay the bills.

At the same time, he was oil painting, but never showing his work. “My wife was like, ‘I thought the whole point of art was to get it out to people?’ So I kind of did an assessment. I decided sculpture was what I really loved.”

The catalyst came when he was let go from his video production job. That was the moment he decided to try something different: He would find a way to do what he loved. 

“That kind of threw me over the edge to becoming an artist, and it was a good thing for me,” he says. “That's how I came into the chainsaw. I wanted to be able to make a living in Minnesota as a professional artist.” 

He started getting jobs, a few here, a few there. Every carving seemed to open a new door and lead to another. In the meantime, he finished his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota in 2001.

Since then, Ingvoldstad has created thousands of sculptures, including the Minnesota Vikings crowd-rallying Skol Drum, but even that may not be as well known as the LOTI Pencil.

How to explain the phenomenon that has taken on a life of its own over the last half decade? He thinks back to his education and the advice of a performance art professor at the University (Susan Lucey) who would take the class down to the Mississippi riverbank and have them grab driftwood or whatever they could find and form a drum circle. The assignment? Work together to make a rhythm. 

“She taught us a lot about the collaborative experience,” says Ingvoldstad. “And the thing that really always stuck with me is she said, ‘If you're going to be an artist, and you're going to make stuff for an audience, you have to really consider that audience… Make sure that you're giving them something of yourself as a human being.

“That's always been in the back of my mind. Her class taught me so much. I don't want to take the audience for granted ever.”

If he has any advice for art students and others today — and a window into why the LOTI Pencil has become such a phenomenon — it’s exactly that: 

“Remember the audience, and don’t take them for granted. And when they're excited about your work, let them have that. Listen to people and their response to your art, because you might learn something.”

On the first Saturday in June, as he pushes round the tip of the pencil with a giant sharpener and looks out over a massive crowd, giddy with excitement and gathered as far as the eye can see, he still can’t quite believe it. 

“I was inspired by a lot of people in life, and I'm still inspired by a lot of people in life,” he reflects. “If I can be one of those people, great. I think that's what art is about.”

Learn about the University of Minnesota’s Bachelor of Arts degree program in studio art.

See more of Ingvoldstad’s work at his website.