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Glen Arbor Arts Center celebrates Youth Plein Air Month

The Glen Arbor Arts Center is celebrating Youth Plein Air Month this July with a month-long initiative to inspire young artists and honor Glen Arbor’s rich history of plein air painting. Free Youth Plein Air Art Kits are available all month long at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. Each kit includes everything a young artist needs to head outside and start painting. Over 30 kits have already been checked out by young artists eager to explore plein air painting. Kits are free and available all month at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. Learn more at GlenArborArt.org or 231-334-6112.

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Glen Arbor Arts Center presents Youth Plein Air month in July

Throughout July, the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s new Youth Plein Air Month will invite children ages 6–12 to step outside, paint in the open air, and capture the signature landscapes and buildings of Leelanau County. “Youth Plein Air Month is intended to nurture confidence and creativity by taking art making outside the classroom,” said Scott Bouma, executive director of GAAC.

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Glen Arbor Arts Center hosts Late Night Fridays

The Glen Arbor Arts Center is keeping the lights on a little longer on Friday nights. Late Night Fridays and Manitou Music bring the B-Side Growlers back to the GAAC Front Porch on June 27, 5-7 pm. This “tradition-inspired, toe-tapping fired” acoustic trio from Grand Rapids plays a plein air concert of blues, jazz and country. Bring a chair and refreshments.

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Remembering Suzanne Wilson’s creative mission: Friday night summer art openings resume at Lake Street Studios

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To know the history of the arts in Glen Arbor is to know Suzanne Wilson. A venerated artist and pillar of the community, Suzanne had the singular ability to translate Leelanau’s land, light, and water into work that felt both intimate and expansive. But perhaps more significantly, Suzanne did not simply depict Leelanau’s landscape—she transformed its cultural fabric. In the early 1990s, Suzanne began organizing Friday night art openings at Lake Street Studio’s Center Gallery, the public-facing component of her studio. The summer 2025 season of Center Gallery opens on June 27 with Joan Richmond, a Traverse City-based artist best known for her luminous landscapes.

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Glen Arbor Arts Center brings Kodak Quartet as Musicians-in-Residence

The Glen Arbor Arts Center is delighted to present the Kodak Quartet as their Musicians-in-Residence from June 10–21. Presented through a partnership between the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s Manitou Music Series and Interlochen Public Radio’s Sound Garden Project, this initiative focuses on planting classical music in unexpected places. The Kodak Quartet will bring its electrifying, genre-defying sound to the Glen Arbor area.

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Members Create at Glen Arbor Arts Center

An annual tradition returns. The Glen Arbor Arts Center’s Members Create exhibition opens June 6 at 5 pm with a public reception featuring the work of 55 current GAAC members. A showcase of members’ talent, Members Create runs through August 7. The exhibit includes work in a wide range of media: paint to fiber, clay to metal.

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Leelanau Reads with Nita Prose

The four public libraries of Leelanau County are pleased to host Nita Prose on Saturday, May 17, at 7 pm at the Glen Lake Schools Auditorium. She will discuss her first book, The Maid. Prose has authored a sequel, novella, and a third book in the The Maid series, “The Maid’s Secret,” which was released in April. She will be interviewed by guest host Sarah Bearup-Neal of the Glen Arbor Arts Center.

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Glen Arbor Arts Center features gallery walk, artists in residence

Stroll through the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s current exhibits, Walking, and Random: Collages From The Scrap Pile. Join in a conversational discussion of the exhibitions with GAAC gallery manager Sarah Bearup-Neal on Saturday, May 17, at 1 pm. The Arts Center also welcomes two artists in residence this month. Seattle artist Chandra Wu will talk about her car journey east to Glen Arbor, and how that Spring trip became the heart of her artist-in-residence project. Wu, the Glen Arbor Arts Center’s first artist-resident of 2025, will share stories and vignettes of her two-week residency on Thursday, May 15, at 10 am during a conversational presentation at the GAAC.

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Walking the ordinary and extraordinary, and what’s in between

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More than mere proof of motion, walking is an act both ordinary and extraordinary. It has the unique ability to shape human experience in both subtle and profound ways. A first step marks the beginning of independence, like those of a small child—something Leah Hilton Turner, lifelong Glen Arborite, knows well. The mother of twin daughters, now almost three, recalled the pure joy and excitement of that milestone.It is this vast spectrum of meaning—walking as both instinct and intention—that is the focus of the latest exhibition of the Glen Arbor Arts Center (GAAC): Walking. Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC’s gallery manager, is the visionary behind Walking. Predictably, Bearup-Neal infused the exhibit with her signature energy and curiosity. As with past shows, her concepts, while deceptively simple, are profoundly cerebral. The exhibit remains on display through May 29.

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Reich’s Sleeping Bear Dune Overlook named Manitou Music poster

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The Glen Arbor Arts Center has awarded Barbara Reich’s pastel, “Sleeping Bear Dune Overlook #10,” the honor of being the official Manitou Music poster in 2025. It is an acknowledgment of Reich’s exceptional ability to transform a familiar subject into something entirely unique, and a testament to her extraordinary talent, writes Katie Dunn. Every year for the past two-plus decades, the GAAC has chosen a distinguished piece of art representative of the area, reproducing the image as a poster and offering it at an affordable price.

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