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 Interview with 2025 Manitou Music Poster Artist Barbara Reich
On a 2024 painting expedition, Traverse City, Michigan painter Barbara Reich stumbled upon a small group of windswept trees and vegetation 600 feet above Lake Michigan.
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Creativity Q+A with Jan Johnson Doerfer
Jan Johnson Doerfer, 73, feels better when she is creating, when she can go down to the beach and watch the water, or connect with the birds, or add to a collection of sticks that are “art waiting to be made.” Creative work has been a constant thread throughout her adult life. Now, this enduring […]
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Video Interviews with Jeff Condon and Susan Jacoby
As part of the GAAC’s The Sky Is Always There exhibit, we spoke with two visual artists whose works are a testament to their fascination with and reverence for the sky.
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Creativity Q+A with Chad Pastotnik
Deep Wood Press is situated on four acres in Antrim County, surrounded by 450 acres of land under the protection and stewardship of the Michigan Nature Association. This is Chad Pastotnik’s home, backyard, place of work, and shelter from the storm of contemporary life. This maker of hand-built, hand-crafted fine press books, age 56, bought […]
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Creativity Q+A with L.C. Lim
Frankfort artist L.C. Lim feels her way through her work. “Once I get a feeling from a place, then I’ll use whatever medium will make that feeling [visible],” she said. “That’s how I always go about it. I never think about the medium.” Instead, she think-feels the places that bring her joy: the view through […]
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Creativity Q+A with Fleda Brown
Fleda Brown, 80, is so much more than her resume: author of 12 poetry books, and four memoirs; Professor Emerita at the University of Delaware; recipient of many awards including a Pushcart Prize. This plain-spoken writer is a fan of Elvis, and wrote a book of poems about him. Water recurs [“There’s so much water […]
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Creativity Q+A Video with Claudia Keglovitz
Claudia Keglovitz talks about her tools, process, and the intentions she brings to her collages in this recorded interview.
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Creativity Q+A with Mercedes Bowyer
Mercedes Bowyer, 44, has had a seat on both sides of the arts table. For more than a decade, she lead the Oliver Arts Center, a community arts center in Frankfort, Michigan. After leaving the Oliver, she found herself making the art. A series of life changes pointed her back to an old familiar practice: […]
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Creativity Q+A with Wendy McWhorter
Antrim County painter Wendy McWhorter, 68, is a late bloomer, self-described. But after retiring in 2013 she blossomed — a verb that applies to her creative practice, and her subject matter. Wendy is passionate about flowers. They meet so many needs: color, shape, their brightening presence in the landscape and the front yard. But it’s […]
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Creativity Q+A with Laura Korch
Laura Korch joined the Northwestern Michigan College art department in August 2023. She runs the ceramics and sculpture programs. “I had a very strong pull to [clay] as a child,” said the 43-year-old Traverse City resident. “As my work in pottery began changing into sculpture, I went to grad school [Arizona State] and started painting, […]
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Creativity Q+A Video with Dana Falconberry
Dana Falconberry talks about her tools, process, and her documentation of native plants local to northern Michigan in this recorded interview.
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Creativity Q+A with Mike Cotter
Blankets. Pieces of mirror. A chair that isn’t a chair. Traverse City artist Mike Cotter, 79, has spent a long time thinking about low materials as high art. He went back to art school after moving permanently to Traverse City in 2008, and reignited a dormant studio practice that got sidelined. This is what he […]
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Creativity Q+A with Justin Shull
Traverse City painter Justin Shull “knew, even in high school, that I really wanted to be making visual art in some capacity.” And, that’s the course the 41-year-old artist set: a 2004 BA in Studio Art from Dartmouth College [Hanover, New Hampshire], followed by a 2009 MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University [New Brunswick, […]
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Creativity Q+A with Carolyn Swift
Carolyn Swift, 66, is the visual art version of living [well, making] large. Her collages — a melange of materials, and techniques — can measure as wide as 60″. And across all that surface is a feast of marks, color, texture, raised elements that explore collage beyond its humble cut-and-paste foundations. It has been “a […]
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