Brianne Farley takes “silly seriously,” she said. The Traverse City author-illustrator believes “[h]aving fun is very important.” And both of those things infuse the 41-year-old’s work, which involves drawing on walls [aka painting murals] and detailing, in word and picture, how a worm makes a sandwich. Read on. It all makes a ton of sense. […]
In addition to everything else in his busy life, Nik Burkhart 38, maintains a studio practice focused on painting, drawing, making marks on wood — as well as on the usual suspects [paper, canvas]. “I’ve been drawn to working with wood because it allows me to engage directly with a natural material, and embedded in […]
Well into his career as an advertising executive, Hank Feeley, 84, wondered if he’d taken the wrong fork in the road. Wonder led to action: He hung up his business suit and enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A painting hobby became a professional practice. Making, he said, is “what human […]
“Place has become the bedrock of my work — ‘place’ meaning Michigan, where I was born and raised,” said Boyne City painter Dani Knoph Davis. “Learning about the wildlife of a place is so important, but has been swept under the rug over the last 50 years.” And so, with every brushstroke, Dani, 39, makes […]
Mark talks in more detail about the process and thinking behind his Random collages, a series he began seven years ago, in a short video interview. “Random-Collages from the scrap file” on view in the Lobby Gallery May 1 – Aug 28, 2025.
Jil Johnson, 63, is an outsider artist: no formal training, works in a naive style, wants to make beautiful things by hand. She lives in Traverse City. She wants “to live to the fullest, and that means being authentic, and that means knowing who you are.” She does. This interview was conducted in December 2024 […]
Traverse City painter Katherine Corden, 33, has “a short attention span when it comes to [her] painting.” Hard to believe given the extensive, practical evidence of her steady focus: on her process, her making, and the many ways she lets the world know about it. In depicting her favorite subjects — groups of people gathered, […]
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.
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 […]
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.