Members of Sons of Norway Normanna Lodge 52 are bringing a little bit of their heritage to the Albert Lea Art Center this month.

The Art Center, as part of its year-long 50th anniversary celebration, is featuring the secondary schools art show, with art from Albert Lea seventh- through 12th-graders in the Storrer Gallery, as well as an ethnic show with Norwegian art in the Herfindahl Gallery.

The open house is today from 1 to 3 p.m. Refreshments, including lefse, rosettes, krumkaka, kringla, cream puffs, breads, coffee and punch, will be served. There will be music by Peter Grano, violinist, and David Grano, keyboard.

The show will be open through April 25. Hours are from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.

Admission is free, but donations are accepted.

The Norwegian exhibit will feature some of the works of carver Gary Loshman.

Loshman started carving when he was 12 years old. He and some other boys would get together and carve model airplanes out of balsa wood.

He served in the Seabees Reserve, attended college and learned the building trade, later managing small jobs for an industrial building company, and later taking on big jobs.

Along the way, he got into Norwegian carving — much of the skills self-taught — and taught community education classes on it for 18 years where he was living, in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Iowa, area. He also taught some community education classes in Albert Lea after moving here in the 1990s.

He stresses that his wife, Marilyn, is the one with the Norwegian heritage. Her maiden name was Johnson, and she is a 1950 graduate of Albert Lea High School.

“I’m Norwegian by marriage,” he said. “I kind of feel like an imposter, not being Norwegian and living in a Norwegian community.” His ancestry is German, English and Italian.

Marilyn Loshman did a lot of background work for his classes, ordering supplies and then helping with the painting. She still paints the items he carves.

“It’s really a joint project,” Loshman said. “If she doesn’t help directly, she advises. She’s my guiding light. She encourages me. If I had someone who wasn’t for me, I wouldn’t be doing this (carving).”

Loshman carves birds and other items using Norwegian designs. One of the more popular designs is the acanthus, patterned after a thistle found in southern Europe. The pattern is used in many Norwegian crafts, including rosemaling.

“It’s a very difficult type of carving. It’s up and down and in circles,” Loshman said. “Your tools have to be sharpened just right to do it.”

In the classes he taught, Loshman said he made sure to give the students the attention they needed from the start, including making sure the students’ carving tools are sharp.

“To do this type of carving, a person needs to have between 20 and 30 tools,” he said, pointing at the acanthus.

The tools have gotten expensive, he said, recalling once when Marilyn gave him money to go out and buy good carving tools and he got a candy sack full.

“Once you have all the tools, the important thing is getting them sharp. A dull tool won’t leave a piece shiny, it will leave a striped mark. It’s important that it’s shiny when you have your peers looking at it,” Loshman said.

After he retired, Loshman said he probably carved for about 20 hours a week; now he just does it a few hours a week. Much of his work is done on basswood, which is a softer wood with no apparent grain. It also finishes and paints well, he said.

Loshman said he starts a project, like a bird, by developing a pattern or picture of the subject. He transfers the pattern to wood, then cuts the profile out with a band saw. Then he cuts away everything that doesn’t look like a bird. Then he adds the details, using smaller knives and burning tools. After the item is painted, it’s sealed with a lacquer.

Among the classes he offered was a hand-carved Santa Claus. “We had the same people taking the classes all the time,” he said. “We had 13 different designs.”

Lodge member Karen Mandsager has collected a number of items from lodge members to complement Loshman’s carvings. There are pictures from family farms in Norway, ship pictures and Lloyd Herfindahl pictures.

There are rosemaling pieces, Norwegian dolls from the Nordic Doll Club, music and hardanger.

“Some of the lodge members will be wearing their bunads (women’s folk costumes representing the geographic area from which they originate) at the opening,” Mandsager said.