January 2005

Larry Stark

Fish House Series

When Larry Stark moved from southern Michigan to North Branch, Minnesota in 1980 he was intrigued with the ice fishing shanties that appeared on the lakes each winter.  It took him six years to get enough nerve to venture out on the ice, but when he did he found whole communities of fish houses.   There were people who lived for several months at a time in these structures, some of which were quite elaborate, enough to be used as summer cottages on the lake shore.

Larry has assembled this exhibit relating to ice fishing and he co-authored a book on the subject with Bud Berglund of California.   The book called "Hook, Line and Shelter" was mostly about the people who ice fish.  It is almost out of print, but the publisher recently called Larry and suggested a second edition in 2005.

This exhibit relates more to the architecture of the fish houses.  There are thirteen photographic silkscreen prints and three photographic inkjet prints.

The original photographs for the larger prints were black and white and they were created before he started using digital images.   Leo's Fishouse is a four color process photographic silkscreen.  The other three smaller prints are photographic inkjets.

Larry now lives near Eau Claire, Wisconsin on 80 acres with a pond where he ice fishes.