While the majority of the women named Barbara were born in the 1930s and ’40s, one young reader, seven-year-old Barbara Noreen Tornvall from Chicago, was delighted to learn of all of the area women who share her name. Little Barbara wrote to the club’s instigator, local Barbara Alldredge, to share a little about herself.
This is the story of six female photographers who fell in love with the Leelanau Peninsula and found a way to share that love through their photos. In our July 11 issue we profiled Jane Fortune of Leland for her work discovering female artists of the Italian Renaissance, many of whom are described in her book, Invisible Women. Fortune’s work, for which she just received an Emmy, inspired our effort to showcase the work of female photographers on the Leelanau Peninsula.
Glen Arbor’s weekly summer farmers markets are the quintessential way to enjoy an early morning stroll. But what about the people that spend hours preparing, gathering the freshest ingredients, mixing and tasting, and toiling in the kitchen to make delicious products to sell during those brief morning hours? Meet Stathis Stamatakis, who hails from Crete, and knows a thing or two about decadent Greek pastries.
Oil Painter Jeff Ripple will demonstrate his craft at Empire’s Sleeping Bear Gallery on Saturday, July 27, from 1-3 p.m. Refreshments will be served. Ripple may be “a Florida boy at heart,” but he also embraces the idyllic rolling hills and gentle landscape that characterizes Leelanau County. Even though Ripple is colorblind, he has “always been into art.”
As Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate celebrates 10 years in Leelanau County, it also fetes the new ownership of the business under Jody Dotson and D.c. Hayden of Traverse City, who acquired it from Mimi Wheeler on April 1. The ingredients of a successful business in Leelanau County would seem to include: a unique, high-quality product, community-minded entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to identify trends, a strong network of employees, like-minded business owners and customers, and a pinch of good luck.
Best known locally as the co-owner with Bob Hesse of Leelanau County’s new Bella Fortuna Restaurant in the center of Lake Leelanau, Jane Fortune, a long-time Leland summer resident, has been working quietly for years to rescue the works of female artists languishing in storage in the more than 40 museums in Florence.
Just days after the Dec. 14, 2012, mass-shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Leelanau County author Bill Smith wrote to the Cyrenius H. Booth Library in Newtown, Conn., and offered to send copies of his children’s book, Chickadees at Night. Like the hundreds of thousands around the world who sent prayers and gifts to the devastated community, he wanted to help the town heal.
Summer officially arrives at the Cedar Tavern when campers pack the place on Wednesday nights. “Leelanau Pines (a campground/resort) is a big supporter of us,” says the tavern’s owner, Ellen Stachnik. “We’ve gotten to know the campers really well. Wednesday is “Ribs,” and they all come in for them.” The barbequed ribs are also Stachnik’s favorite tavern meal. Will she divulge the recipe?
Naturally shy about promoting her own work, acrylic artist Michelle Hart Jahraus eventually came to the realization that if you want to make waves other than in a painting, you must put your art “out there.” The Maple City resident, and owner of Duck to Swan Gallery in Cedar, entered her 22” x 22” original canvas, “Cherry Orchard Reflections,” in the Adult Fine Art division of the 2013 National Cherry Festival poster competition and won, from a field of more than 100 entries.
Leelanau writer Kathleen Stocking reflects on her father, Pierce Stocking, who passed away the day after selling his vast tracts of land near Glen Arbor to the federal government. That land is now part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.