Glen Arbor Arts Center hosts late summer events
From staff reports
Massachusetts artist Ian Kennelly will use his Glen Arbor Arts Center residency to “further his observations” of the ephemeral space that exists where water, land and sky meet. This is familiar territory for the painter. In the last two years, Kennelly has created works that explore the human relationship to the boundaries created by water. Kennelly will talk about his project during a free public presentation on Friday, Aug. 25, at noon, at the GAAC, which is located at 6031 S. Lake St. in Glen Arbor.
Since the 1990s, the GAAC has welcomed visiting artists who want to immerse themselves in their work. The GAAC’s Artist-in-Residence program offers up to seven, creative practitioners a two-week respite from their daily lives in order to focus on a new idea that needs space, or to develop an on-going project.
Goodbye to Summer Concert
The Glen Arbor Arts Center bids farewell to summer with a Front Porch Concert on Aug. 25 from 5-7 pm. This musical adieu is part of the GAAC’s Late Night Fridays, and features two different woodwinds groups. The concert is free.
Hour one features Steve Gilbreath on clarinet, and Kama Ross on flute playing light classical arrangements. After a short intermission, the Leelanau Flute Ensemble finishes off the evening with selections from Mozart, Vivaldi, Gilbert and Sullivan, and some light jazz tunes. Both GAAC galleries will be open during the concert.
Concert-goers should bring a chair, and their evening picnic and refreshments. The GAAC’s parking area will be closed to vehicle traffic for the concert from 4-8 pm.
Coffee with the Authors
Coffee With the Authors is a live, conversational interview with local and regional authors about the writing craft and process. This Glen Arbor Arts Center series continues Sunday, Aug. 26, at 11 am with novelist Sarah Shoemaker in a conversation about historical fiction. GAAC gallery manager Sarah Bearup-Neal leads the discussion.
Shoemaker, a Leelanau County resident, published Children of the Catastrophe, in 2022. Set in the early 1900s, Shoemaker crafts a fictionalized telling of a Greek family’s progress through the final, turbulent decades of the Ottoman Empire. In 2017, Shoemaker took on Charlotte Bronte´s beloved classic Jane Eyre. She invented a layered, autobiographical fiction about Edward Rochester, as told by Edward Rochester — Jane Eyre’s dashing, mysterious employer in Mr. Rochester. In her August 26 conversation, Shoemaker will talk about how historical fact informs her fiction, and how she develops the voices of characters whose lives are rooted in a lost time.
Walk & Talk the Exhibits
A guided walk-and-talk through the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s new exhibit, In Translation, takes place Sept. 2 at 11 am. Bearup-Neal leads a conversational tour of the exhibit. In Translation explores how visual artists translate the human and natural worlds, current events, and contemporary social issues through their art work.
The Walk & Talk will also include conversation about The Side Of The Road, an exhibition of abstract landscapes by Alice Moss. These mixed media paintings are in the GAAC Lobby Gallery.
No one walks into a gallery and fully understands what the exhibiting artists intended to say with their work. During this one-hour program, Bearup-Neal will talk about both exhibits’ themes; shed light on artists’ statements; and explore how artists use materials to communicate meaning; or make an idea more dynamic. Visitors will leave with a fuller understanding, and appreciation of the exhibit.
A grant from the Michigan Humanities Council provides support for the In Translation project. The Walk + Talk is free.
Plague Phase
The arts give us powerful tools for talking about the world. So, how do artists speak, write, and create in response to the ecological decline of the natural world? That’s the question asked in Plague Phase, a meditative video that uses theater, poetry, and visual art to examine the difficult subjects of ecologic loss and adaptation. Plague Phase, offered as part of the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s In Translation project, will be screened Sept. 7 at 6 pm in the GAAC Main Gallery. The screening is followed by a discussion with the video’s creators.
Leelanau County writers Bronwyn Jones, Anne-Marie Oomen, and Joe VanderMeulen took University of British Columbia Professor Emeritus William Reese’s 2020 paper, “Ecological economics for humanity’s plague phase,” as the starting point for their project. Filmed over two weeks in October 2020 at the studio of Leelanau County sculptor Bill Allen, Plague Phase brings together Michigan poets, youth actors, music, and sculpture to “use our minds … and imagination to envision what we would all prefer to deny” about the threats to the ecology.
The presentation of Plague Phase is supported by a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council. It is offered without charge. Doors open at 5:30 pm. No reservations are required. To read more about the entire In Translation project, visit GlenArborArt.org/Exhibits.
