Loti Pencil

The Loti Pencil or Lake of the Isles Pencil is a 20-foot (6.1 m) sculpture of a yellow Trusty Empire Pencil Corporation brand number 2 pencil sculpted by Curtis Ingvoldstad. Located on the front lawn of 2217 E Lake of the Isles Parkway near the Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis, it was sculpted in 2022 from the trunk of a 180-year-old bur oak tree whose crown was blown off in a 2017 storm.

Each year in June, a "sharpening" of the pencil is celebrated, during which the hosts use a giant 4-foot-tall, custom-made pencil sharpener to sharpen the pencil. The sharpener was designed by the same sculptor Ingvoldstad. With each sharpening, 3 to 10 inches (8 to 25 cm) are taken off the sculpture each year, with an eventual expected outcome of its reduction to a stub over the years. The sculpture is one of several such landmarks in the city, such as the Spoonbridge and Cherry fountain, which is about a mile away.