Glen Arbor Arts Center features “Sign of the Times” and “Mapping Home”
From staff reports
An historic wind storm ripped through Leelanau County in early August 2015, leveling acres of woodland, forest, and residential structures.The broken remains of sheds, docks and other wood structures provided the raw materials for two young entrepreneurs to turn destruction into construction. Siblings Bella and Zack Pryor talk about the small business they created on July 21at 2 pm at the Glen Arbor Arts Center, 6031 S. Lake St., Glen Arbor. This program is open to public at no charge.
Bella Pryor, 18, and a University of Michigan freshman, and her brother Zach, 15, established Michagain Signery in 2015. The duo salvaged storm-damaged wood and began creating iconic, decorative signs. They built a small business, the profits of which were directed back to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Their new enterprise also gave them a constructive, creative, life-affirming way to work through their feelings of sadness about the storm and its impact on their Glen Arbor home.
Mapping Home
Scott Mills moved back to his childhood home of Maple City in 2014 after spending 10 years away. He quickly realized he needed to get reacquainted with his home turf. Mills talks about the tracking and mapping project he created to do just that on July 28 at 2 pm at the Glen Arbor Arts Center, 6031 S. Lake St., Glen Arbor. This program is open to the public at no charge.
In order to reorient himself to the land and get reacquainted with the peninsula that called him back home from the Pacific Northwest, Mills began walking the unmarked trails and remnant roads that thread through the forests and over the dunes nearby. These “old ways” and their histories so captivated him that he began to plot their routes on a map and describe his passages in writing. Repeated walks in all seasons exposed new dimensions to these old ways, as well as older ways extending back to the Pleistocene. Mills continues to discover, follow and map these ways, and he is currently at work on a body of prose and poetry describing his ongoing passages.
Both events are offered in conjunction with the GAAC exhibition “New Views: Home/Place,” a deep look into home and place identity. It runs June 7-August 8 in the GAAC gallery. For more information visit GlenArborArt.org.
