A chronicle of creativity. Interviews with creative practitioners – writers, performing and visual artists, GAAC artist-members, and other Northern Michigan makers – about process, technique, tools, materials and the influence of place on practice.
Creativity Q+A Video with Jessica Kovan
Benzie County artist Jessica Kovan’s mixed media work is now on display in the GAAC’s Lobby Gallery. The Birds Are Watching, Kovan said, “asks viewers to pay attention from the vantage point of local bird species.” Kovan combines the personal with the political in this series of mixed media, avian vignettes created on cardboard. She took on the subject of local birds “in hopes of establishing a sense of interconnectedness between all beings.”
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Creativity Q+A with Royce Deans
Royce Deans’s creative life has been a “crooked trail” of work in graphic design, and illustration — a not-so-straight path toward a process-driven practice focused on painting and printmaking. “I’ve […]
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Creativity Q+A Video with John Hartig
A conversation with John H. Hartig, Ph.D, author of the 2022 book Great Lakes Champions, the story of 14 people who loved the Great Lakes so much that they devoted their careers…
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Creativity Q+A with Cynthia Marks
Leelanau County, Michigan, artist Cynthia Marks, 71, has been “making art for 50+ years, a startling and comforting thought,” she said. “I am consumed by using clay to conceptualize most […]
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Creativity Q+A with Laura Hood
It was never a question of IF Laura Hood would play an instrument, but WHICH instrument she would end up playing. It was all in her genes, and part of […]
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Creativity Q+A with Mary Beth Acosta
A Feral Housewife, an exhibition of collages by Leelanau County artist Mary Beth Acosta, take up residence in the Glen Arbor Arts Center Lobby Gallery January 6 – April 21. […]
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Sky Stories with Mary Stewart Adams
As part of the GAAC’s Telling Stories exhibition [January 13 – March 23, 2023], Gallery Manager Sarah Bearup-Neal talked with Northern Michigan residents about stories told in the sky and […]
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Creativity Q+A With Mark Mehaffey
Mark Mehaffey relocated to Leelanau County five years ago. He lives in a house that bumps up against the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — a fitting locale: A large […]
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Creativity Q+A with Mary Fortuna
Traverse City artist Mary Fortuna, 66, draws on a number of inner resources to fuel her creative work — chief among which might be a self-identified weirdness. Over the years […]
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Creativity Q+A with Scott Lankton
Blacksmith Scott Lankton [left] was “hooked on hot steel” the first time he worked with it. The Leelanau County artist, 66, went on to find a vocation in the forge, […]
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Creativity Q+A with Dorothy Anderson Grow
As part of the exhibition Ropes, Ribbons, Twigs, and Things in the GAAC’s Lobby Gallery, Traverse City artist Dorothy Anderson Grow talked with Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, about the […]
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Creativity Q+A Video: 99 Clay Vessels Project
Alison Kysia is the creator of the multi-media visual art and storytelling project 99 Clay Vessels.
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Creativity Q+A Video: Baskets of the Anishinaabek
In 1987, the Leelanau Historical Society began documenting, interpreting, collecting, and preserving birch bark and quillwork baskets, and black ash baskets.
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Creativity Q+A with Lauren Everett Finn
Painter Lauren Everett Finn, 64, isn’t shy about mixing her media. In any given composition, the Benzie County artist [pictured left] might develop an idea by collaging an element to […]
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Creativity Q+A with Lindy Bishop
Landscape painting is the focus of Lindy Bishop’s practice. Lindy lives in Elk Rapids, the town in which she was raised, in the midst of a region where the landscape […]
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Creativity Q+A with Meg Staley
There has never been a straight line through Meg Staley’s career. But every experience — from sale clerk, to department store clothing buyer, to printmaker — has factored into the […]
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