Glen Arbor Art goes on the road to Frankfort
Photo of late Suzanne Wilson by Sarah Bearup-Neal
From staff reports
The ninth in a year-long series of articles about local art, culture and creativity.
Thirty-three paintings and photographs selected from the Glen Arbor Art Association (GAAA) Artist-in-Residence Collection (2008-present) will be exhibited at the Elizabeth Lane Oliver Center for the Arts in Frankfort, Oct. 21-Nov. 26. The show opens with a reception Oct. 21, 5-7 p.m. at the Oliver Art Center, 132 Coast Guard Road.
In addition to the artist-residents’ works, there will be paintings by the late Suzanne Wilson, founder of the GAAA’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program; paintings by former AIR Chairperson Harvey Gordon of Glen Arbor; and contemporary quilts by Benzie resident Sarah Bearup-Neal, the AIR Committee’s current chairperson. A panel discussion about artist’s residencies takes place on Nov. 5 at the Oliver Center.
The groundwork for the GAAA’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program was laid in the late 1980s at the behest of Suzanne Wilson and her friend Ananda Bricker, another Glen Arbor studio artist. Although visual artists had long found their way to northern Michigan, Wilson felt Glen Arbor might be considered off-the-beaten-path by the art world, and she took it upon herself to change this perception. With its storied natural features, the idea of a residential program for visual artist made great sense, and the idea took hold. Wilson began to handpick visual artists for the program, and found friends in the area to house them. The program has since evolved. Today, a committee of seven volunteers administers the program, and selects residents through a juried application process. Painters comprise the lion’s share of applicants. The program, however, is open to artists working in other visual media, performance, prose, poetry and music. Residencies are two weeks in duration. Typically, there are seven residencies each year. They begin in mid-May and continue into October. The GAAA provides housing in Glen Arbor, and a studio space at Thoreson Farm, an historical farmstead in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
The notion of creating a collection of work made by artist-residents materialized early in Harvey Gordon’s tenure as AIR chairperson, which ran from 2005-2011. “It occurred to me that a substantial permanent collection of quality art work would enrich and enhance the GAAA. Requesting, but not requiring, the contribution of a single work by each visiting artist seemed like a reasonable, convenient, and effective way to build on the small collection that existed at that time,” Gordon wrote in an email. “Our visiting artists have been generous, and the collection has grown accordingly over the years.”
Today, the collection nears 50 two- and three-dimensional pieces, however the AIR Collection skews in favor of landscape paintings — a reflection of the preponderance of artist-residents whose focus is on the local land, water and sky.
Gordon, who has lived full-time in Glen Arbor since 2004, retired in 2000 as head of the Art Department at Glen Oaks Community College in Centreville, Mich. He taught art for 27 years, all the while continuing to exhibit his own paintings at prominent institutions such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Chicago Art Institute and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He contends that in much the same way visual art “enriches and enhances our homes, communities and culture,” a permanent collection of artwork operates in the same aesthetic fashion for the GAAA. Curated versions of the collection find a summer home at the Glen Lake Community Library in Empire. Most days, though, one find selected works hanging on the walls of the GAAA’s main meeting room. “When somebody walks in and says, ‘Tell me about your organization,’ the collection provides a good starting point for describing who we are and for talking about our AIR program,” said Peg McCarty, GAAA executive director.
Or, when a group of local students walks into the GAAA, the collection becomes an educational tool, at least in the skilled hands of Linda Young, retired curator of Museum Education with the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and past AIR program chairperson. It is not uncommon for the Glen Lake Schools field trips to include a visit to the GAAA. With small groups of young students, Young uses the AIR Collection to illustrate how visual artists think. “I often tell school groups that (visual) artists often tell us something about themselves (in their work), about the world they live in and (for older audiences) their beliefs,” Young said in a September email. “What I always like to do is ask the question: ‘What do you see? Is there really purple in the footprints on the dune? Maybe the artist exaggerated the color to fit the mood he wants for the painting? Why?’ It’s important to really get the children to look.”
Adults, too, will have a chance to really look and learn a little about the artist-residents when they visit the Oliver Center’s exhibition. The imagery depicted in many of these works focuses on the iconic natural features that define this shoreline region. Program founder Suzanne Wilson, too, returned time and time again to this world of dune, water and forest that surrounded her Glen Arbor home. Working in watercolor and oil paints, Wilson’s loose style captured fleeting, ephemeral moments, in all four seasons. The artist taught and traveled widely, mentored artists and the arts in northern Michigan, was a founding member of Lake Street Studios and the GAAA. She died in 2003 at the age of 63.
Rounding out the exhibition is the work of Sarah Bearup-Neal. Her medium is the contemporary quilt. Although quilts are generally associated with the domestic sphere, Bearup-Neal approaches this functional household object as a starting point for art making. The Benzie resident’s work is about relationships – between colors, lines, and shapes. She combines machine stitching with hand stitching, and references traditional quiltmaking symbols and icons in her compositions, which hang from the wall rather than draped on the bed. Bearup-Neal manages Center Gallery, located at Lake Street Studios in Glen Arbor.
The Oliver Center maintains a year-round schedule of monthly exhibitions in its 2,800 square feet gallery. The organization has participated in other collaborative projects, “but nothing on this scale,” said Mercedes Michalowski, the Oliver Center director.
“Collaborating with other arts organizations is always a wonderful learning experience,” Michalowski said. “Local arts organizations usually have the same goals and mission – to bring arts and culture to northern Michigan — and collaboration allows you to reach out and attract a wider audience. It’s positive, all the way around. If we’re going to strengthen the arts community in this area, this is [one] way we’re going to do it.” The exhibition is sponsored by the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation.
Supplementing the AIR Collection exhibition is a panel discussion about artist’s residencies, what they are and how they figure into a creative practice, supplements the exhibition. Bearup-Neal will facilitate the discussion at the Oliver Art Center on Saturday, Nov. 5, 1 p.m. The panelists are painter and art educator Joan Richmond, and poet Teresa Scollon, who is also writer-in-residence with the National Writers Series’ Front Street Writers Program. Richmond and Scollon are both of Traverse City. There is no charge. For more information please call the Oliver Art Center at 231/352-4151.
Frequent Sun contributor Sarah Bearup-Neal contributed to this report.
