Leelanau artists envision 2017

By Sarah Bearup-Neal
Sun contributor

The 11th and final installment in a year-long series of articles about local art, culture and creativity.

Five visual and performing artists were asked to peer into the new year, and consider what lies ahead for them and their practices. Here’s what they said.

Ron Gianola, painter, Honor resident.

Backstory: The Northern Michigan landscape is Ron Gianola’s subject; but one wouldn’t necessarily point to an object in one of his oil painting and say, “Aha! Point Betsy Lighthouse!” Gianola abstracts the flora and fauna, water and sky, and strives to paint the sensation he experiences as he looks. Gianola’s paintings are about emotion, light and color rather than direct transcription. He sees the local landscape not as a grouping of blues, browns and greens, but in hot, electric colors: no stranger to magenta, Mr. Gianola. He edits things out, too. One does not find overhead wires, buildings or other human artifact in his landscapes.

More of the same: 2017 brings “a continuation of what I’ve been doing,” Gianola said. “I really do feel like what I’m doing is working. It has been successful … And I’m looking forward to doing that very thing with a vengeance. Maybe go a little more abstract. I like to think that the landscape will be in there somewhere, buried deep.”

Experiment/Explore: Gianola paints a lot with a palette knife. This tool allows him to manipulate paint differently than a brush, and “cleaning a lot of fairly large brushes is a pain in the neck,” he said. “I’m actually thinking of making my own tool, some kind of perfect, stiff brush with the perfect flatness that isn’t a brush.”

Find him: Gianola teaches at the Elizabeth Oliver Lane Center for the Arts in Frankfort. His work can be seen at the Sleeping Bear Gallery, Empire; Twisted Fish Gallery, Elk Rapids; Art and Soul Gallery, Traverse City; and on his website, www.RonGianola.com.

Jerry Gretzinger, mixed media collagist, Maple City resident

Backstory: For more than 30 years Jerry Gretzinger has been mapping an imaginary place he began envisioning in the 1980s. Using simple tools and humble materials — recycled pasteboard, colored pencils, acrylic paint, magazine images — Gretzinger has created and charted a world comprised of 3,000-plus, 8” X 10” card panels, which cover an estimated 1,500 square feet. “Jerry’s Map” has been exhibited in galleries from Frankfort, Michigan to Paris, France to Nagoya, Japan, with many stops in between including one at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in March 2017.

The coming year: Gretzinger likens his practice to a flowering bulb. “Right now, it’s in a dormant state,” he said. “A lot of the map is in the studio, but not in the art world. I hope to have more shows in the coming year.” Gretzinger is also looking even further out. The 74-year-old artist wants to find a permanent home or homes for this massive work. “I don’t want my poor kids to have to inherit these stacks and stacks of map panels,” he said.

The world beyond “Jerry’s Map”: Gretzinger has mapped a world of his own creation; but one wonders how the world beyond his Maple City doorstep affects his art making? How current domestic and world events find their way into the work? “I have the radio on while I work,” Gretzinger said. “I was very upset about the [U.S. presidential election]. I’ve been writing comments about it directly on the map … At one point I wrote, ‘Donald Trump should stop tweeting and start leading.’ He’s no longer addressing a campaign rally, but has to be a leader of all the people. It’s a way for me to vent.”

Where in the world?: The coordinates for Jerry and “Jerry’s Map” can be taken at www.jerrysMap.com. He has a blog, too: JerrysMap.blogspot.com.

Lisa Johansson, musician, flute teacher, Honor resident.


Backstory: Lisa Johansson picked up a flute when she was 11 years old and hasn’t really put it down since. She’s part of the iconic band Song of the Lakes, a regional quartet that formed in 1983 and has seven albums under its belt. The band’s focus — in both music and spirit — is its members’ “love of the Great Lakes,” Johansson said. “Infused with that are our own particular interests: Scandinavian sounds, Celtic sounds. I bring as much Classical to it as I can, only because I was trained that way.”

Paddling into 2017: In 2006, these self-described Great Lakes troubadours created a musical program based on the Holling Clancy Holling 1941 classic Paddle to the Sea. The group wrote 12 original songs that trace the adventures of a carved toy canoe and its stick rider through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. “The story is based on this humble character …. and showcases all the elements of the Great Lakes resources: their beauty, the economics, the fishing. The program is a great way to get all that information out to young kids,” Johansson said. A 2016 grant from the Michigan Council for the Humanities allows Song of the Lakes to continue bringing this program to elementary school students in the region. So far, they’ve performed the program for an estimated 3,000 school kids. “The challenge is finding the money and the grants to keep it out there,” Johansson said. “That’s my resolution for the coming year: Help the project in its movement forward.”

Water FLOWs: Johansson experienced something of a sea change in her professional worldview this past year. Song of the Lakes performed excerpts from Paddle to the Sea in December at the For Love of Water (FLOW) event at Northwestern Michigan College. The focus was on the dangers posed by Line 5, an oil pipeline running beneath the Straits of Mackinaw. Owned and operated by Enbridge Inc. [a company with an unfortunate history of oil spills including the 2010 contamination of the Kalamazoo River], the 60-year-old pipeline’s structural integrity is a source of protest and controversy. “I don’t know if it was an unspoken policy, but we’ve tried to keep [the group’s performances] not-political,” Johansson said. “We’ve tried to keep [the group’s focus] true to the beauty of the lakes, the [musical] work, the shipwrecks. It was at the pipeline concert that I started thinking we have to step up to this … It’s time. The dangers of the pipeline are so in our face right now. I intend to incorporate [those concerns] into our performance and into our dialogue with the audience.”

Paddle on over: Find out more about Lisa Johansson and Song of the Lakes at the band’s website: SongoftheLakes.com. She teaches flute at Traverse Community Music: www.TraverseMusic.com.

Mary O’Neill, plartist [artist working with plastic], Cedar resident.


Backstory: In 2009, Mary O’Neill hit a wall about all the plastic packaging she was landfilling. O’Neill got angry. And then she made art. “Everything is plastic,” she said. “The more you pay attention to it, the more you’re, ‘Holy crap! It’s everywhere’ — bags that your bread comes in, bags that your onions come in, bubble wrap, the newspaper comes in a bag, your adult diapers come in a bag.” The raw material of O’Neill’s 2-D work is fused plastic, bags and other packaging ironed together. Plastic + art = plart. For the first few years of her practice, O’Neill focused on quilt-like composition in which the relationships between color and shape were the beginning and end of the story. Now, she’s moving in a more representational direction toward landscape. “The landscapes are more interpretive,” she said. “The medium is so difficult to make an exact representation.”

This year in Plart: “The coming year, I hope to be more disciplined, spend more time in the studio,” O’Neill said. “Hopefully, I’ll be doing more art fairs … And I want to find at least two galleries that will carry my stuff.”

Kid stuff: The inner critic is a real creativity buzzkill. Ask any creative person. On this subject, O’Neill said, “A huge inspiration for me is children’s art. One of the reasons I find their art so compelling is it’s so unconscious. It pours from the [child’s] brain and heart onto the page. Becoming less self-conscious about my [art making], that’s the goal. I often get caught in the Is- this-good?/Is-this-bad? mindset. That’s a space I don’t like being in. I want to get to the point where I’m not in that room.”

Where’s Mary: Her work can be seen on her PLART Facebook page: www.facebook.com/plartart/?hc_ref=SEARCH.

Carol Spaulding, painter/collagist, Maple City resident.

Backstory: For years, Carol Spaulding has been cutting up her non-representational watercolor and gouache paintings, then rearranging the bits into new compositions, or gluing them onto business and greeting cards. In addition to paper collage, Spaulding is pillaging her family’s wood stove kindling pile for raw materials. Spaulding’s husband works in the construction trades, and brings home the so-called “waste.” “Using a chop saw and sandpaper, I’m transforming these scraps into [geometric] forms and combinations,” Spaulding said.

In the new year: Spaulding is “excited about continuing with the collage work in paper and wood,” she wrote in an email. “I also have some ideas I want to pursue in painting on a larger format.”

Better living through art: A recent presidential election took place outside Spaulding’s studio door. She said, “I was totally surprised and disturbed by the outcome, and felt … like I have to do something to counteract this; but what would it be?” The answer, she suspects, is to keep on keepin’ on. “Perhaps the greatest contribution I can make will be through the ‘Messing Around With Art’ classes,” Spaulding wrote of painting classes she offers. “I think there is a great need and desire for folks to experience creative expression on a personal level. To make art is to lift up the general vibration of one’s experience, and, ultimately, that effects the world.”

Where’s Carol: Information about upcoming “Messing Around With Art” classes, and her exhibition schedule can be found on her Facebook page: www.facebook.com/ carolcspauldingartist/