The Paint Box Gallery Miniature Show

The Paint Box Gallery is currently exhibiting their annual Miniature Show. The gallery also offers framing and textiles from owner Carol Gresko. Photo by Len Villano.

“Charlie and I were jurying a high school art show in Milwaukee,” Carol Gresko recalled, “and I commented to him that a lot of the student work was too large for our gallery. I told him, ‘We need a thousand works of art the size of the Our Father on the head of a pin!”

And the Miniature Show was conceived. Since 1995 the annual event has been a part of the Door County art scene.

In 1961 the late woodcut print-maker Charlie Lyons founded the Paint Box Gallery in north Ephraim. His business also offered art supplies, framing, restoration, appraisals, and consignments.

“Charlie needed a niche,” his textile-designer wife said. “Small works for the heart that would fit on the walls of the gallery.” The Paint Box has ample total space for displaying art, but relatively small walls. “Miniatures were unknown on the peninsula until Charlie started giving lectures on the topic.”

In his talks, Lyons explained that the thirteenth-century one-half by three and one-half inch book cover painting by Jeanne d’Evreux “set the standard for miniature work.” Historically pieces classified as miniatures were very small highly detailed portrait or landscape paintings executed on surfaces such as ivory or vellum. The work was portable and served the modern day function of photographs, just as people today carry photos of grandchildren or a summer cottage.

“Charlie liked the intimacy of a miniature,” Gresko said, “very poetic, romantic. Small things make you pay attention to them. You have to get up close to them, you have to engage.”

“Homeward” by Susan Hunt-Wulkowicz.

In keeping with the traditional concept of miniatures, all work accepted for the show must be roughly five by five inches or smaller, under 25 square inches in total.

“We frame all the work as a part of the consignment,” Gresko said. “It presents the work better and shows off for people what we can do with matting and framing.” And the event has been an educational process for the exhibitors as well.

“Over the years the artists have begun to understand the process of the miniature,” she added. “The compositions and the artists have gotten better.” For example, rather than simply presenting a single object, a classic miniature offers a highly detailed and complex composition; not a single flower, for example, but rather a flower garden.

And the number of artists represented in the show has grown as well. A sampling from them demonstrates the range of approaches possible working within this specific genre:

The well-known Milwaukee artist Les Didier draws upon nature for his subjects and has won stamp design competitions.

James Dolan of Manitowoc creates whimsical watercolor still lives.

Illustrator Johm Schmelzer, originally from Madison, creates playfully vulgar acrylic human figure paintings.

“Outsider artist” Norbert Kox of DePere attacks the incongruity of Biblical words through his unsettling images.

“Chet’s Place” by Bob Beck.

Award-winning Milwaukee-area artist Joanna Poehlmann offers realistic humorous watercolors.

The late Harold Altman, Charlie’s old professor at UW-Milwaukee, has achieved fame through his stone lithographs of park scenes in Paris.

Printmaker Julia Foote of New York and Ephraim wrote and illustrated a bilingual children book, the text both in English and French.

Sandra Place summers in Door County, her pastel and acrylic local landscapes supportive of the Land Trust.

The Russian Orthodox-style icon paintings of Sister Maryam Gossling of Madison offer a sharp contrast to that of other artists, as does the work of her student Robert Appel, a retired Gibraltar Schools elementary teacher.

Mechanical engineer Peter Steinmetz (who designed the lift for the Sturgeon Bay bridge) once had a gallery in Egg Harbor but now lives in Madison. He studied with the late Gerhard Miller and like his mentor, paints rural Door County settings.

Janesville artist Susan Hunt-Wulkowicz creates hand-colored etchings with little prayers concealed in the intricacies of the composition, the miniscule text sometimes legible only with a lupe.

Gresko and her sons, Aaron and Arnie Bacigalupo, run the dual enterprises of the Paint Box Gallery and Gresko and Sons Textile Design under one roof. Lyon’s presence continues to be felt by visitors to the gallery, as Gresko, whose textile designs are part of the permanent collections of both the Chicago Art Institute and the Smithsonian, has transferred the images of his famous Journey of Siddhartha woodcut panels to fabric, for a luminous white on white window treatment at one of the entrances.

The Paint Box Gallery Miniature Show, which also includes some larger work as well, opened in May and continues through February 2014, at which time planning will begin for the next show.

The Paint Box Gallery, which features two-dimentional work in all media, printmaking, jewelry, mosaics, sculptures, and ceramics, is currently open 10 am – 5 pm, Monday – Saturday. The gallery is located at 10426 Water Street in north Ephraim. For more informaiton call 920.854.4435.