Thousands of Cheering Spectators Gather to Watch This 20-Foot-Tall No. 2 Pencil Get Sharpened
After a 2017 windstorm toppled the crown of their oak tree in Minneapolis, John and Amy Higgins hired artist Curtis Ingvoldstad to transform their beloved tree into a giant pencil sculpture
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When a windstorm damaged a large oak tree in their yard several years ago, John and Amy Higgins made a somewhat unconventional decision.
They decided against hiring an arborist to chop down what remained of their beloved tree. Instead, they called in an artist, who transformed the toppled oak into an instantly recognizable yellow No. 2 pencil.
The 20-foot-tall wooden sculpture has become a beloved landmark in Minneapolis. This month, the couple hosted their annual sharpening festival, a celebration that attracted thousands to their home on the shores of Lake of the Isles.
Now in its fourth year, the gathering included a performance by the University of Minnesota pep band, ice cream, dancers wearing pencil costumes, a Prince tribute and a T-shirt giveaway.
The main event, however, occurred when two men climbed to the top of some scaffolding with an oversized red pencil sharpener in tow. They lifted the sharpener atop the sculpture and began spinning it around to sharpen the pencil’s tip, eliciting cheers from the crowd of spectators on the lawn below.
“It’s a crazy time we’re living in and it gives people a diversion, a bit of fun and time to let loose and be silly. We need that in life,” says Amy Higgins to KARE’s Samie Solina.
The pencil saga dates back to May 2017, when the Higgins’ bur oak was “decapitated” in a storm, writes Madison Bloomquist for Mpls.St.Paul magazine. The wind caused the top of the tree to topple to the ground, leaving only the rooted trunk behind.
The Higgins family was devastated—the couple estimated the tree was around 180 years old—but they decided to channel their sadness into bringing something new and whimsical to the neighborhood.
“Pretty quickly, we landed on the idea of a pencil,” John Higgins tells Mpls.St.Paul magazine. “Obviously, the shape made sense, but everybody’s used a pencil; everybody knows a pencil. We wanted it to be a little Andy Warhol-style pop art.”
They contacted artist Curtis Ingvoldstad of Big Woods Sculpture and asked if he could bring their vision to life. Using a chainsaw, Ingvoldstad spent months shaping the trunk into a perfect pencil shape—including the eraser and the ferrule, the small metal collar that holds the eraser in place.
Ingvoldstad painted the shaft yellow, the eraser pink and the band a metallic silver. To complete the replica, he etched the words “Trusty Empire Pencil Corp Made in U.S.A—916 No. 2.” onto the shaft. His final masterpiece—dubbed the Lake of the Isles Pencil, or LOTI Pencil for short—measures 32 inches in diameter.
The Higgins family held the first sharpening event in June 2022, and it’s since become a popular start-of-summer tradition. It’s meant to be a birthday party of sorts for the pencil, bringing neighbors together for “general community absurdity,” according to a post on the sculpture’s official Instagram page.
But the gathering also serves a practical purpose: Over time, wind, rain and snow dull the sculpture’s sharp tip, so it needs a bit of yearly maintenance.
Ingvoldstad shaves between three and ten inches off the top of the pencil each summer, report Mark Vancleave and Steve Karnowski for the Associated Press. Eventually, just like a real pencil, the sculpture will be just a nub with an eraser—and both the Higgins family and Ingvoldstad are okay with that.
“We tell a story about the dull tip, and we’re gonna get sharp. There’s a renewal,” John Higgins tells the AP. “We can write a new love letter, a thank-you note. We can write a math problem, a to-do list. And that chance for renewal, that promise, people really seem to buy into and understand.”
The gathering started small but has ballooned into a major event. This year, the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Kyeland Jackson estimates more than 2,000 people attended, descending upon the Higgins’ home from all over the country.
“We knew the event would bring fun and life to the pencil,” John Higgins tells Mpls.St.Paul magazine. “It’s this moment of renewal and excitement that lets the art evolve. But we had no idea what it would actually end up meaning to the community.”
