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 creative work she now does. The Leelanau County artist hand builds women’s clothing. Each piece is a composition that allows …

Melonie Steffes, 48, learned by doing. And by reading library books about practice and process. And by finding other makers to mentor her. Her paintings are filled with bears, insects, mushrooms, and other woodland influences that describe the world of the body and mind in which she lives. In both …

A conversation with painter Linda Dewey and poet Anne-Marie Oomen about their collaborative project On The Precipice, a small exhibition of four paintings and four companion poems...

Kaz McCue’s lives as an educator, studio artist, and regular-guy-walking-around-the-place blend seamlessly into one another. Everything is connected. Everything cross pollinates, whether it happens in the studio or the classroom. The 59-year-old Leelanau County resident works in many media, unconfined by a single material or technique. As a art student …

Karen Anderson came “out of the womb searching for meaning.” The Traverse City writer has found it in a bowl of oatmeal, buckle snow boots, canoeing the Manistee River, and the historic neighborhood in which she’s lived for several decades — among other places and things that, at first blush, …

Bob Downes, 69, “always wanted to be a novelist.” And, that is what he became. Bob Downes is the essence of peripatetic. The author of seven books, many of which were written on the move around the globe, calls Traverse City his home base. He is as inspired by writers …

Woodland Studies is a series of black and white photographs by Grand Rapids photographer Rodney Martin. The region’s woodland, rivers and natural areas are well documented by all manner of visual artist. In this case, Rodney Martin has elected to make images in black and white – a creative departure …

As part of the GAAC’s PaperWork exhibition, we’re in conversation with two people for whom the old art of papier mache is foundational to their work – Dorienne Sherrod and Sharon Morris of the Big Heads Corp.

Leelanau County artist Mary Beth Acosta works in collage, under the creative nom de guerre “The Feral Housewife.”

The genre known as “artist’s books” is not easily defined. People have been making beautiful, artful books for centuries. But “artist’s books” defy convention, and occupy a niche all their own.

Shanny Brooke, 42, is a classically-trained singer who found her way into visual art + painting after she hit a career/life roadblock. A package of student canvases and a tin of children’s watercolor paint opened a new door, which included opening the doors to Higher Art Gallery in Traverse City, …

Nick Preneta, 37, works in wood. Green wood. Mostly with his chain saw. Notching and carving and creating marks, both intentional and serendipitous. The Leelanau County artist, trained as a furniture builder, began to explore the aesthetics of non-functional wood shapes and objects when he started looking at the scraps …