The Glen Arbor Art Association is hosting an exhibition of acrylics by Michelle Jahraus August 29-30 at the Art Association, at 6031 S. Lake Street in Glen Arbor. “What color is it?” This has always been Jahraus’ first question in deciding on a bike, cat, sweater, car, house, etc.
Linda Beeman, an Owosso, Mich., resident specializing in Japanese woodblock printing, will exhibit her prints of the landscape and lakeshores of northern Michigan and Japan from Aug. 29-Sept. 18 at the Lake Street Studios Center Gallery in Glen Arbor. The show opens Aug. 29, 6 p.m. with a reception for the artist.
Glen Arbor merchants hold their biggest sales of the season on Labor Day weekend, as the traditional tourism season winds down. Sales usually begin around 9 a.m. on Friday, August 29, and line the sidewalks of downtown Glen Arbor until Labor Day Monday. Be sure to visit each store for some deals inside, too. Enjoy checking out your favorite places and some new ones too.
The next Empire Area Community Emergency Fund Concert will be held on Sunday, Aug. 31, from 4-6 p.m. at the Manor on Glen Lake with a featured performance by the “Reggie Show” with John Rutherford. Come hungry and thirsty there will be an open cash bar and a special menu available.
Grab your friends and attend the seventh annual Traverse City Summer Microbrew & Music Festival, August 22-23 at the Village at Grand Traverse Commons. Over 200 beers will be on tap. Enjoy great music all evening long, shake your tailfeather in the Silent Disco tent, delight in delicious local food, and visit with thousands of other craft brew and music lovers. With the incredible Brandi Carlile and Nahko and Medicine for the People headlining, the weekend tickets are worth their weight in solid gold memories.
Photos of Lake Huron, taken during a family vacation, caused portrait painter Charles Pompilius to consider a new direction for his work. The Ferndale resident talks about how he explored this mid-career transition during his Glen Arbor Art Association (GAAA) artist-residency on Aug. 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Glen Arbor Art Association, 6031 S. Lake St. in Glen Arbor.
What I did on my summer vacation: the age old cliché, the assignment for school children that both children and teachers dread, in part because it’s so often boring—both for reader and writer. Why is that? Or why is it that when we look at the hundreds of iPhone photos we took of the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb, we never get the rush of flying down the sand. What happened to that feeling of bubbling laughter when Uncle Jack fell through the inner tube into the Crystal River? We think, for example, we can keep the Leelanau County wine tasting alive with pictures alone, but even though pictures recall the image and some association, they don’t recall the narrative, the story of the moment. That’s the limitation of pictures, glorious as they are. So we need words too. We tell the story of the picture, sometimes ad nauseum, to our neighbors back home, but even that, over time, loses its power. That is, until the senses get involved.
Again, this year, local musicians and performers are donating their time and talent to perform the Woody Guthrie classic, “This Land is Your Land” over and over (and over …) on a street corner in downtown Traverse City. They will be there, rain or shine, day and night for three straight days, singing their hearts out to help the hungry. And you can help. Buckets of Rain, the nonprofit that organized this musical marathon, provides sustainable gardens and fresh vegetables to impoverished areas of the world, including overseas and in inner-city Detroit.
Two bears walk into a Glen Arbor Township garden. No joke. How does that work? It works when a patron of the arts makes a gift of a limestone sculpture to the community. The patron wishes to remain anonymous. The artist is Gert Olsen of Jupiter, Fla. And the sculpture, titled “Father and Son,” is a modernist take on a locally iconic subject: an adult bear and cub.
Do you want to learn how your favorite beach may respond to predicted climate change? Then join researcher, Lukas Bell-Dereske for a special public program entitled “Climate Change in the Great Lakes Dunes: Responses of the Plant Community at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore” on Thursday, August 21 at 9 a.m. at the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center auditorium in Empire.