School of the Arts: Creativity and camaraderie converge in the North Woods

Three generations come together

Photo of thee generations of the Dent family

Three generations decided to make this year’s School of the Arts a family affair. Dorothy Dent, center, encouraged her daughter, Jennifer Vlack, right, and granddaughter, Ashley Vlack, to join her for at school, which she has attended for six years.

School of the Arts has grown to be a family affair for some. One family boasts three generations.

Dorothy Dent has been participating with her two sisters for six years, and this year her daughter, Jennifer Vlack, and granddaughter, Ashley Vlack, have joined them.

“School of the Arts generates enthusiasm,” Dent says. “My daughter is just so excited. But Ashley was the one who really wanted to go. … I have high hopes for her.”

Jennifer Vlack, of Madison, Wis., says her spirits are soaring after her first classes in basic drawing and sand carving, where she learned to etch designs on glass. “I was just flying,” she says.

She admits that she was a bit intimidated when she entered a sand-carving class because the other students seemed more experienced. “But everyone was really generous, and helped me out,” she says.

Ashley Vlack says she was pleased with the teacher of her writing class. “I like writing,” she says.

Dent, of Madison, Wis., and her sisters, Rosemary Andrea of Menomonee Falls, Wis., and Mary Styczinski of Rochester, Minn., have taken the same classes for the past few years. This year, they are attending bookmaking and Photoshop, where they are learning how to restore family photographs.

Their love of art was inspired by their mother, Ruth Bellile Eiden, a Rhinelander native and painter who quoted Shakespeare to them as they were growing up.

The sisters’ enthusiasm for School of the Arts also convinced Styczinski’s husband, Dave, to join them a few years later to try painting, which he had wanted to do for years. He ended up winning a berth in the Northern National Art Competition, held annually at Nicolet College during the School of the Arts.

The family members now all stay at a cabin in nearby Eagle River that is owned by Jennifer Vlack and her husband, so the week is a family reunion, too.

Dent and her sisters just wish their mother could be with them. “We think a lot about her here,” Styczinski says. Adds Dent, “She would have loved this.”