In 1961, construction was completed on two remarkable structures in Kalamazoo, both designed by the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. One was the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, based on a design by architect Mies van der Rohe and expanded in 1994 to become the structure we occupy today. The other was the Upjohn Company’s…
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…
Learn more about glass art with Ekin Deniz Aytac and Joshua Davids! A husband-and-wife team of artists hailing from Edremit, Turkey, and Colorado respectively, Aytac and Davids draw from a unique combination of culture, heritage, and experience to develop new works of glass art. They have lived, traveled, and created artwork together since 2014. Aytac…
During select ARTbreaks throughout the summer, artists featured in the 2024 West Michigan Area Show will deliver talks on their featured pieces and larger bodies of work, their artistic processes, and their points of inspiration. With works selected from more than 300 submitted entries, the West Michigan Area Show highlights the work of talented regional…
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…
