October 1, 2020 at 12:03 p.m.
Bringing legends to life: Lake Tomahawk unveils new Snowhawk painting
Bringing legends to life: Lake Tomahawk unveils new Snowhawk painting
By Kayla Houp-
Late last month, the Town of Lake Tomahawk unveiled its newest addition to pay homage to the snowhawk, a painting by Lake Tomahawk artist Rodd Umlauf hung in the new addition to the Raymond F. Sloan Community Center.
"After we had this (addition) built last winter, we knew that we wanted to put something up on this wall and Rodd came to mind immediately," town chair George DeMet explained. "He designed this and I couldn't be happier. It's fantastic."
No stranger to the snowhawk, Umlauf has been painting the bird of legend for years, including a wooden statue of a snowhawk in Lake Tomahawk.
"In real life, there's no such thing as a snowhawk, but that's our town mascot and the name of our snowshoe baseball team," Umlauf said.
"How we came about that snowhawk for the team was, I think there was a contest to have a name of our team," Lake Tomahawk Snowhawks manager and coach Jeff Smith said. "That was one of the names they came up with."
Umaluf's painting depicts a snowhawk flying over Little Carr Lake amid a backdrop of fall colors and will be the first thing visitors see when they visit the Raymond F. Sloan Community Center's new addition.
"I think this is awesome," Smith said. "There couldn't be a better thing here."
"It shows who we are," Umlauf said. "I used a photo that my sister took as reference for the background scene, and I also used one of her photos of a hawk, but then I transformed it into our snowhawk."
"And, if there was a snowhawk, that's exactly how I'd envision it," Smith said.
Umlauf said he worked on the painting on and off over the course of three to four months and it was "probably the largest painting (he'd) ever done."
"We have something here now that we can tie our town to and our snowshoe baseball team to," Smith said. "It'll always be in this town and that's our fame."
Kayla Houp may be reached via email at [email protected].
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