Category: Art Features

“Birds In Art,” the new exhibition opening at The Miller Art Museum (MAM) on Saturday, November 14, 2009, is comprised of 60 original contemporary works by painters and sculptors from around the globe.

El Dia de los Muertos may involve cemeteries and skeletons, but the autumn Mexican holiday has nothing to do with Halloween. No one pretends to be a spook and no one shouts, “Trick or treat!” The November 1 and 2 Days of the Dead celebration, despite its subject, is a warm gathering of family and friends to remember loved ones who have died.

Mention the name Emmett Johns and folks might respond, “He’s the guy who paints portraits of people, right?” And, while the answer to that question would be “yes” – as Johns is probably best known around Door County for his detail-rich, realistic portraits – there is much more to his collection of work.

Through the years, there have been numerous influences for my painting career. I was fortunate to have had great painting instructors in college and graduate school.

Mom says: Wipe that look right off your face. Young man, you have attitude written all over you. That expression is not becoming on a lady such as yourself, she says.

The first critique for my pastel paintings took place from the trunk of my Toyota Camry in the summer of 2000. With characteristic enthusiasm, and at the request of my precocious 6-year-old daughter, Franne Dickinson didn’t hesitate to leave her home studio to hold a critique of my crude works in her driveway.

I am a lover of barns, and living in a place like Door County with a strong agricultural history has only fueled that obsession. However, I had never thought about the side of a barn as a space for artwork – until I was told about the Kewaunee Barn Quilts Project.

We have language for the writing process. When discussing the production of a play, for example, we say that it must go “from the page to the stage.” Art, however, has no witty turn of phrase for the development of a work, be it a painting, watercolor, fiber art or textile media.

When life is described as a journey, the writer is generally dealing in metaphors. But anyone talking about IsAbel is being quite literal. For Isabel Beaudoin’s life was a series of travels about the globe as she followed her love of art.

As a sixth grader, cartoonist Mike McCartney didn’t think his talent for drawing cartoons was anything special.

As a photographer, there are the usual suspects that I admire – like Ansel Adams, Bryce Pearson, and Gallen Rowell – but my self-taught style comes from my father, Dan Eggert.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Alice might say if she were to wonder at the drawings of artist Logan Woods in “FLEX:  A Show of Strength,” the exhibit of work by emerging artists at the Peninsula School of Art.

There are over 15,000 museums of all types in the United States, and of those, three-quarters are actually located in small towns and rural areas, much like Door County.

The best birthday presents Sue Donohoo ever received were from herself. For her 30th birthday, Donohoo, an elementary music teacher at the time, gave herself a Drawing 101 class.

As I walked the path from the wheat fields to the apartment in which Vincent VanGogh lived in Auver-sur-Oise in France last May, I felt an immense connection not only with VanGogh but all of the Impressionists that had tread that path.

There is no shortage of art in Door County; dozens of galleries throughout the peninsula feature a variety of painting, pottery, and sculpture each year.

“One can paint with pipes, stamps, postcards or playing cards, candlesticks, waxed cloth, collars, painted paper, newspaper.” – Apollinaire, Paris, 1900s In 1974, I was 15 at UWGB art camp, when I met professor David Damkoehler.