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Claire Taylor honored with Arts Service Award

Lead Summary

HONORED _ Claire Taylor (left) received the Music and Drama Club’s prestigious Community Service Award from Sara Skelton for Claire’s extensive efforts in arts participation and promotion in the Ely area. The Award waspresented at the club’s Christmas Party on Monday, December 18, at Grand Ely Lodge. Claire is an active visual artist who paints in watercolor, makes stained glass pieces and pottery. Her work is widely collected and shown. Photo by Cecilia Rolando
The Ely Music and Drama Club is happy to announce this year’s Community Service to the Arts Award recipient is Claire Taylor.
Claire was born in the Chicago suburb of Batavia, IL, and later moved with her parents to Arizona, where she attended the University of Arizona in Tucson.
In 1979, she moved to Minnesota, and in 1993, to Ely. She now lives in a cabin built on the property of her grandparents’ Lindskog’s resort on Burntside Lake.
Claire loves the wilderness, the lake and fishing, but mostly, Claire loves making art. She began doing stained glass when she moved to Minnesota; then, expanded to water colors and now pottery, all of which she does in her studio on the shores of lovely Burntside Lake, where she is inspired by the beauty of nature that surrounds her.
Although Claire loves her solitude, she has always been active in many clubs and organizations since coming to Ely. She’s been an active member of the Watercolor Club, the Garden Club, the Quilt Club, and the Pottery Guild, and has been a member of Northern Lakes Arts Association since moving to Ely. She has served as a Board member of Ely Greenstone Public Art and on the Donald G. Gardner Humanities Trust Board. In addition, Claire has worked on planting trees around Trezona Trail, spent five years volunteering to teach art in the Ely Public Schools, and always donates art to the Ely Community Resource Art Auction, among others.
Claire is dedicated to making our community more beautiful, and has worked on the Miner’s Mural on Central Avenue, the Blueberry Mural on the propane tank near the Grand Ely Lodge, and the tree mural at the hospital. She contributed to the quilt that hangs in the Ely Public Library, and spear-headed the stunning stained glass windows in the new Library building.
“If anyone asks, I just give,” remarked Claire. “I just believe we need to give back to our community.” Claire Taylor has certainly done so much for the Ely community, and the Ely Music and Drama Club is so pleased to recognize her contributions with the 2017 “Community Service to the Arts” Award. Claire’s name will hang with the 36 previous award recipients in the alcove entrance to the Vermilion College Fine Arts Theatre.

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