Maple City artist wins Cherry Festival poster honor

By Pat Stinson
Sun contributor

Naturally shy about promoting her own work, acrylic artist Michelle Hart Jahraus eventually came to the realization that if you want to make waves other than in a painting, you must put your art “out there.”

The Maple City resident, and owner of Duck to Swan Gallery in Cedar, entered her 22” x 22” original canvas, “Cherry Orchard Reflections,” in the Adult Fine Art division of the 2013 National Cherry Festival poster competition and won, from a field of more than 100 entries.

National Cherry Queen Meg Howard announced the division winners in May during the Very Cherry Fest Expo, held at the Hagerty Center in Traverse City.

Jahraus’ painting of a ripe, red cherry — with fish-eye reflections of a lake and cherry orchard laden with fruit — is superimposed on the magnified, brilliant-green image of a cherry leaf.

She said she was inspired by “fish-eye” photos she saw posted on Facebook by photographers Ken Scott and Mark Lindsay.

“I thought, ‘How would a cherry look, fish-eye?’” she questioned, with a tilt of her head.

Jahraus used a silver reflecting ball she owns to recreate the lensed effect in her painting.

“I held the ball in one hand and my camera in the other,” she said, describing the way she took photos of the reflection in the ball — a scene shot in her backyard, which adjoins a cherry orchard. (Jahraus often photographs subjects she later paints, but also enjoys plein-air painting.)

“It’s like a 3-D painting off the cherry reflection,” she explained.

Her curiosity about such things was nurtured in school.

“A double major at Wheaton College, in Geology and Art, prepared me to investigate all types of natural beauty and to illustrate it,” she wrote in a biography shared on her website, DuckToSwanGallery.com

Asked whether she enters many competitions, she replied: “It’s hard for me to put myself out there, but you have to, and people like that.”

To illustrate her point about sharing her work publicly, she recounted a story of the time she approached a woman working outdoors on a painting. When Jahraus drew close, the woman covered her work.

“I understand that feeling,” Jahraus said, “but as a professional artist you have to be willing to overcome your shyness — you have to be able to pull them (the audience) in.”

For the Leland Wine & Food Festival 2014 poster competition, Jahraus entered her fanciful painting, “Joyful Expectation.” Featured in her work is the tugboat “Joy,” its cargo hold bursting with grapes. Her painting did not win, but she takes the disappointing news in stride.

Her husband, Doug Hart, is “very encouraging,” she says, and helps market her work.

“It’s easy to do, because I love what she does,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Her large, original painting, “Sleeping Bear Wave Tag,” of children playing in the surf at Empire Beach, is currently traveling in “America’s Parks through the Beauty of Art,” an international exhibition of 50 paintings “intended to recognize and promote excellence in original works of art depicting any park in North America,” according to the show’s organizers. Works are being shown in Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History, Jamestown, N.Y.; Kenosha Public Museums, Kenosha, Wisc., and Ella Carrothers Dunnegan Gallery of Art, Bolivar, Mo.

Jahraus twice had her scenes of Leelanau County chosen for the cover of Manitou Magazine, a publication of Sleeping Bear Dunes Visitors Bureau. She was also invited to display her art, in January, in a one-person show in the conference room at Traverse Area District Library — and has been invited for another solo show there in January, 2014. This summer, she will attend seven area art shows and fairs. (Visit her website for locations and details.)

This region of “shores, sands and scenes that God has created” is in her genes, embedded in seven generations of her family — from original settlers in Leland to her grandchildren.

“My great-great grandparents homesteaded around what is now Pollock Lake. It was then called Thurtell Lake. The Thurtells homesteaded next to the Halls and their children (my great grandparents) married. My grandmother (Helen Thurtell) was born in Maple City and married Harold Jahraus from Traverse City. His father and mother (my greats) owned a cigar store and the cigar box factory in Traverse City. They also had a place on Lake Leelanau with a few other families from T.C. called the Octonary Club (on Heimforth property).

It’s no wonder, then, that the artist and gallery owner supports efforts to conserve what she calls the area’s “natural environment,” while preserving the landscapes she loves on watercolor paper and canvas.

Recognizing that not everyone will want or have room for a larger painting, she created a collection of miniatures she calls the “Leelanau Living Series.” The 5” x 7” (and smaller) works allow visitors to take home a memory of Leelanau County. Prices for her paintings and prints on canvas (stretched over a frame) range from $15 to over $2,000.

“I don’t print everything I paint, but the prints are affordable,” she explained.

Jahraus is also a decorative artist and muralist (she has traveled for larger projects) who works on commission. At press time, she was painting a bookcase with a brightly colored floral design for her daughter. Her gallery’s Leelanau Cottage Furniture Collection presently includes three hand-painted pieces.

Soon, she will be asked to sign 200 limited edition prints of her painting for the National Cherry Festival. Meanwhile, her work can be viewed at the gallery in Cedar (a space she shares with L. Saile Jewelry, located next to Blue Moon ice cream), and at the Leelanau Coffee Roasting Company, in Glen Arbor. To view her work online, find the Duck to Swan Gallery on Facebook, Etsy (DuckToSwanGallery.etsy.com) and her website, DuckToSwanGallery.com.