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Curiosity camp

With fun day trips, the University of Minnesota finds a cure for "vacation-deficit disorder."

If you want to play hooky from work in summer, just tell your boss that the University of Minnesota thinks you should.

Americans are putting in more work hours than at any time since the 1920s, it says, but as many as 30 percent of us don't take a vacation. Yet, research also shows the brain needs time away from the job so it can stretch.

It turns out that all work and no play really does make Jack a dull boy. That's why the College of Continuing Education offers summer Curiosity Camps, with nearly two dozen chances for people to take a day off.

"Free time is the engine of innovation and creativity," says the CCE's Margy Ligon. "We know from brain research that people need to think in different ways than they do on the job. So, we're encouraging people to take a day to immerse themselves in a completely different experience."

Thanks to the U's connections, students can go behind the scenes at such places as the university's apiary, kinesiology labs, Raptor Center, Weisman Art Museum and Goldstein Museum of Design. They can tour St. Croix vineyards, houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and artists' studios, all in the company of experts.

They can go where they've never gone before.

That's why I signed on for "Come One, Come All to Judyland" in 2006. It was my chance to meet Rochester artist Judy Onofrio and see her back yard, about which I'd been hearing ever since I became a devotee of Wisconsin's roadside sculpture environments.

To Twin Citians, Onofrio is best known for her exuberant figures of shells, broken china and bottle caps that have been crowd favorites at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Weisman Art Museum and the Minnesota Museum of American Art.

But museums are not necessarily the natural milieu for artwork by Onofrio, whose inspiration comes from more homespun sources.

Like many of my favorite "outsider" artists, Onofrio (pronounced Ono-FREE-o) is an obsessive scavenger of gewgaws and doodads and, like a magpie, is drawn to all things bright and shiny.

And like many other self-taught artists,she includes such pop-mythology icons as Paul Bunyan in her work and has a sly, offbeat sense of humor.

Yet, Onofrio is no outsider artist. The daughter of a three-star admiral and the wife of a Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon, she is college-educated, worldly, affluent and an art-world insider, a McKnight Distinguished Artist.

Who is this person, anyway?

Day of discovery

That's what professor Rob Silberman was there to tell us at our "Come One, Come All" Curiosity Camp, named for a traveling exhibit of Onofrio's work.

"Judy isn't folk, she isn't outsider, she isn't naive, but she loves that kind of work," he told us. "Her work can be regarded as popular and egalitarian in that we're all united in a love of Judy, in part because you don't need a Ph.D. to understand it."

Silberman showed us slides of Judy's early work, and then we boarded the motorcoach to Rochester.

My seatmate was Judy Harvey of St. Paul, a computer-systems consultant who had taken the day off work. She hadn't been familiar with Onofrio when the CEE e-mailed her the Curiosity Camp schedule, she said, but the artist sounded interesting and, after all, shared her first name. So, she thought, why not?

"I'm at that point in my life where it's like the Peggy Lee song — 'Is that all there is?' '' Harvey said. "I want more life in my life. Working, working, working — I want to ease out of that."

In little more than an hour, we were pulling up to a big, white house, unremarkable except for the bowling balls under the shrubs. In a minute, we were walking through a foyer encrusted with shells and mirrored glass. Soon, we were chatting with the artist, and then she took us into her studio.

Works in progress included a magician's rabbit that somehow looked shrewd, more like a magician than a rabbit. Often, Onofrio said, she likes to "play human versus animal."

"It's just one of these pieces sitting and waiting for me to figure it out," she said. "It needs some piece of conflict that pushes it into a different direction; it's just got to say more than it does."

Onofrio is famous for scavenging: "Objects energize me," she says. Plastic bins labeled "swans," "cowrie shells," "sandbakkel molds" and "circus" lined the walls, and beads and bits of tile and glass filled the trays of a massive cabinet. 

World of art

Then, she took us into the wooded back yard dubbed Judyland, a collaboration with her now-retired husband, Burton.

The garden's shady terraces were lined with Judy's concrete-and-glass figures, plus classical busts, a concrete cat by Burton, a Dr. Evermor-style welded sculpture by one of her assistants and a green Statue of Liberty by Iowa folk artist Dan Slaughter.

My head was swiveling like a weather vane, trying to take in all the cool stuff.

"I love what I do," Onofrio said. "I can't wait to get up in the morning and get to the studio."

From the garden we moved through her living room, filled with art, and her glittering foyer, which was art.

Then, we reluctantly got back on the bus and drove to our next stop, the Rochester Art Center, which was showing an exhibit of her work.

It wasn't the same as seeing Onofrio's work in its natural habitat, but there was a lot to look at in "Come One, Come All."

"She's incredible," said Curiosity Camp student Barb Gaertner of Minnetonka. "Ten people couldn't do what she does. She makes Type A people look like couch potatoes."

Gaertner says she has admired Onofrio for years and had heard about Judyland.

"But no way were we going to get into her house, no way, she's too busy," she said. "So, this is a good idea, don't you think?"

It was a golden opportunity, that's for sure. And at least one person already had had her brain stretched in new ways: Karen Ballard of West St. Paul, who loved Onofrio's whimsical garden and said she was going to go straight home and work on hers.

"This has inspired me," she said. "I'm not a creative person. I have to get my creativity from somewhere else, and this is meeting the need. I'd like to be an artistic person, but I'm just not, so I sure admire the folks who are."

Ballard said she was glad she'd picked the Judyland Curiosity Camp and would gladly go on another.

"Heck yes, as long as my boss doesn't mind my taking a day off now and then," she said. "Actually, I think my boss was kind of jealous."

Trip Tips: Curiosity Camps

Getting there: The camps are based from the Continuing Education and Conference Center on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus, near the state Fairgrounds.

Cost: Each one-day camp is $125 and includes breakfast and lunch.

2009 camps: June 18, Northeast Minneapolis: A Skyline of Steeples and Spires. June 22, Book Lovers' Retreat: Leafing Through the Pages at the Arboretum. June 23, Insight Into Islam.June 29, A Geology Tour of the Twin Cities. July 13, Blown, Slumped, Molded, and More: The Living Color of American Art Glass. July 14, The Art of Collecting and the Art of Letting Go.

July 16, Molière: From Royal Court to Centennial Showboat. July 21, A Culture of Clay: Three Aesthetic Practices in the Twin Cities. July 22, Tall Grass Prairie: From Origins to Backyard. July 27, Florence: Birthplace of the Renaissance.July 29, Wine That's Found Its Time: Minnesota Vineyards. Aug. 4, Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Aug. 5, See the Pyramids Along the Nile

Registration: The schedule comes out in April. Call 612-624-4000 or check www.cce.umn.edu/curiosity.

Where to see Judy Onofrio's work: On the University of Minnesota's East Bank, Onofrio's "Big Catch" is part of the Weisman's permanent collection, and a donor has given it "Madame Twisto." Admission is free. In addition, check www.judyonofrio.com.

Last updated on April 8, 2009