Interpreting the storm through art
By Sarah Bearup-Neal
Sun contributor
After the Aug. 2 storm swept through Glen Arbor — laying down thousands of mature trees, causing millions in property damage — Shira Klein had a thought: Let’s put on a show!
A week after the storm Klein, a seasonal resident, approached Peg McCarty, director of the Glen Arbor Art Association (GAAA), and planted the seed for an exhibition, a show of art predicated on the hopeful belief that there was beauty to be found in the storm’s destruction. That seed-of-an-idea grew into New Views: A Storm of Art, which will be held next June 10-23 at the GAAA, on 6031 S. Lake St. in Glen Arbor. For artists wishing to exhibit their work, a prospectus describing this juried exhibition is now online at GlenArborArt.org.
That remarkable rain-and-hail storm, with winds of up to 100 miles per hour, packed a physical and emotional wallop. According to McCarty, New Views seeks artwork that interprets — rather than documents — the storm’s multiple dimensions. “We’re looking to exhibit work that provides a personal point-of-view about the storm, as well as a reflection of the community’s resilience in its aftermath,” she said. Visual and written (poetry, prose) submissions will be accepted.
At the core of this exhibition is the belief that art has the power to help people process grief and sadness, to take on and explore impossible realities, McCarty said. For the maker, art is a vehicle for expressing ideas and feelings about difficult, dramatic, life-altering events. For the viewer, art helps put into more concrete form the unspeakable, the painful, the unimaginable. It gives voice to the difficult, and provides an avenue for transformation, hope and dialogue.
“It’s not often that we have the opportunity to respond, in such a personal and immediate way, to events this dramatic that take place in our own backyard,” McCarty said. “Early on in our talks about the exhibition we all agreed that we weren’t looking for more factual documentation of the storm. We were looking for interpretations of it. That’s what artists do. They give us new views, and that’s what we’re calling the show.”
“I could not believe the destruction that took place here,” said Klein, who is chairperson of the GAAA committee planning the exhibition. She was at home in Ann Arbor on the day of the storm, so followed events from afar. “I was so flummoxed. I was in a tizzy about it. And then a thought was triggered.”
In 2006 the University of Michigan felled 26 trees to make room for the expansion of its Museum of Art. Eighty master wood turners around the state were enlisted to create objects — vessels, platters, teapots, bowls — from the trees sacrificed to the construction project. This “kernel that jogged my brain” helped Klein to shift her thoughts from despair over the Glen Arbor storm’s chaos in the direction of hope.
“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to find some beauty in all this destruction’,” she said. “Rebirth is OK.”
An online application for the New Views exhibition will be available in March 2016. For more information, please call the GAAA at 231-334-6112.
