Join us in observing Memorial Day with a screening of the 1994 film Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision.This Academy Award-winning documentary tells the story of architect-sculptor Maya Lin, whose design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was selected from over a thousand submissions when she was a 21-year-old student at Yale University. The film explores…
Originally published in 1893 and 1901, Simon Pokagon’s birch bark stories were printed on thinly peeled and elegantly bound birch bark. In Dr. Blaire Morseau’s 2023 book, As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts, these rare booklets are reprinted with new essays that set the stories in cultural, linguistic, historical,…
Join us for an artist’s talk and live demonstration with Jeffrey Bohl, whose sculpture Ellie is featured in the 2024 West Michigan Area Show! Bohl has been creating bronze sculptures for over 16 years, exhibiting along the way in numerous regional competitions and in several individual shows. He pours most of his bronzes in his own…
During this ArtBreak, meet local artists Vicki Nelson and Michael Pfleghaar, whose paintings are featured in the 2024 West Michigan Area Show! Vicki Nelson’s painting The Howards was selected for this year’s Art League Award. As an artist, Nelson is interested in how humans interact with their environments. In her work, she seeks to examine…
For nearly two decades, Preston Singletary has straddled two unique cultures, melding his Tlingit ancestry with the dynamism of the Studio Glass Movement. In the process, he has created an extraordinarily distinctive and powerful body of work that depicts cultural and historical images in richly detailed, beautifully hued glass. Singletary has translated the visual vocabulary…
During this ArtBreak, meet local artists Richard Aardsma and Olivia Stier, whose works are featured in the 2024 West Michigan Area Show! Richard Aardsma finds inspiration for his photomontages in the evolution of the photographic still life in modern and postmodern art. Thought-provoking compositions such as Still Life with Camera convey narrative meaning through the juxtaposition of…
Rebecca Rupe is the Archives/Collections Coordinator for the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians (Gun Lake Tribe). She began her career with the Gun Lake Tribe in the spring of 2021. In addition to assisting in establishing tribal archives and collections, Rupe has also worked with the Tribe in the areas of programming, digital archive website…
Eric Souther (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Kinetic Imaging in the Gwen Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University. During this ArtBreak lecture, he will present a short overview of his experimental media art practice, covering the topics of artificial intelligence, deep time, material agency, and his recent collaborative work with Benjamin Rosenthal:…
Hedy Habra is a poet, artist, and essayist. During this ArtBreak, she will discuss and read selections from her recently-published poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See the Other Side? (Press 53, 2023). The ekphrastic poems in this volume focus on the feminine and are mainly inspired by contemporary and surrealist women artists from different…
Dell Darnell (they/them) is the founder of The Dapper Hammer and is a carpenter and woodworking educator. Darnell started The Dapper Hammer, Michigan’s first trans-owned teaching workshop, several years ago to chase a dream of supporting the community with their hands, building beautiful things, and sharing their passion of teaching people who are not traditionally…
Led by Rev. Millard Southern, this ArtBreak will feature an interactive, jazz-style conversation on topics such as race, culture, and religion with some of Kalamazoo's most-sought after and in-demand jazz musicians. Together they will discuss and demonstrate many of the core characteristics of jazz music, as well as the genre’s powerful potential for bringing communities…
The KIA’s history is rich with remarkable men and women who, through their sheer grit and determination, guided us from a rented room in the YWCA to the “Best Art Institute between Detroit and Chicago.” Jim Carter, past president of the board of directors and current docent, will present KIA history in a series of…