Nine Glen Arbor galleries and artists studios are keeping the night light burning this summer as part of Art After Hours. Art After Hours takes place one last time on August 17, from 5-7 pm. It offers visitors a chance to take a self-guided walking tour of galleries located in Glen Arbor’s art district – a five-block area from Lake Street to M-22 to M-109 West.
Early on, when it became obvious that COVID-19 meant indoor programming at the Glen Arbor Arts Center (GAAC) could not go forward, the GAAC staff began brainstorming alternatives. That’s when the 6ft Apart Art series came to be. On Saturday, September 19, the Arts Center will offer the second 6ft Apart Art artist demonstrations in the driveway. All the exhibitors will work, and show a little of what they do and how they do it—from painting, to creating a collage, to techniques involved with building twig furniture.
In 2016 there are 14 art galleries in Glen Arbor and Empire, as well as innumerable creative people practicing their craft in the privacy of a home studio. It was not always this way. The locality’s first art gallery was established in 1985, and up until that point, the Glen Arbor/Empire art scene might have been more accurately characterized as an art vignette. But with the arrival of Glen Lake Artists Gallery (GLA Gallery), the foundation was laid for today’s perception of the Greater Glen Lake Area as a place that attracts art and craft makers.
At nearly three decades old, the Glen Lake Artists Gallery is among the area’s longest-running galleries. Now, after 24 years in the same building, it has moved to a new location between Lake Street Studios and the Glen Arbor Art Association.
Located next to Petoskey Pete’s in Glen Arbor, Glen Lake Artists Gallery showcases the fine art and craft of some of the finest artists in northwest Michigan. John Huston and his wife Amy Stevens, of Interlochen, manage the cooperative gallery, and John teaches pottery through the gallery’s Glen Arbor Art Association, motivating others to “contemplate the big questions,” through creative action.