A Banner Year For The County’s Artists (Plus Catch The M22 Art2Art Fall Tour This Weekend)

For artists and event givers, the 2021 up north art scene has been stellar, and according to many, it’s red hot. Just ask Suttons Bay twig-furnishings maker Bill Perkins, who says sales and interest in handmade goods are as amazing as they were in the go-go ‘90s — when art-fair artists could barely keep up with demand.

In his 30 years as proprietor of Sleeping Bear Twig Furniture in Suttons Bay, Perkins has watched the fine-art market boom, then ebb with the Great Recession, flow back gently, then fizzle to a drizzle in 2020. It has roared back this year like a hurricane.

One example: He did a small show this year in Elk Rapids expecting to make $300, “and I ended up making $4,000,” says Perkins, whose labor-intensive functional art has him scouring the Leelanau County woods for just the right twigs, branches and bark.

Like Perkins, Fred Rehak’s art milieu requires rooting for materials, but rather than the forests, this Lake Leelanau artist forages in old factories and scrap yards, seeking machinery with historical significance from the 1800s to 1900s. He spends hours researching their provenance, then turns them into retro-cool industrial pieces for the home, like a 1930s cream separator that is now a stool, or coffee tables that were carts used in the old Detroit Tank plant in the 1940s.

Rehak sold two huge and expensive pieces this summer, one at the Main Street Gallery in Leland and the other at Synchronicity in Glen Arbor. Both he and Perkins attribute the sales boom to pent-up demand and, as Rehak puts it, “a buying mentality with people who have some dough in their pockets from the stimulus. It’s really gratifying to see people appreciating what I’m doing.”

Main Street Gallery, which has been an anchor in the Leelanau fine art community since the 1980s, is owned by Dan and Anna Oginsky. Dan Oginsky notes a “striking difference” this year in terms of “customer traffic and customers seeing things they like and taking it home with them. I’m happy to say this year kind of came roaring out of the gate and stayed strong.” Going hand-in-hand with the art investment boom: Gallery manager Cece Chatfield was able to add fresh work from established artists into the mix and secure a couple of new artists for 2021. 

Art lovers still have a chance to find more at tomorrow’s M22 Art2Art Fall Tour, which features four venues of fine art and craft along the fabled Leelanau highway. It’s now in its fourth season, and each stop is an opportunity to meet, greet and gather up some splendid original art from talented local artisans. The show syncs up with a peak color weekend on the peninsula and, of course, is on a thoroughfare with plenty of places to sample food and wines along the way to each venue. 

Perkins, along with Donna Popke, a designer/maker of artsy ottomans in Suttons Bay, are the co-chairs of the M22 show on October 9-10, and also served as chairs of the Suttons Bay Art Fair in August, which had a “spectacular” year, says Popke.

“It was just an explosion of people buying art,” says Popke. “I think lots of artists left there giggling.”

Both she and Perkins are exhibiting in the furniture portion of the show in the Northport Village Arts Building with Rehak, Peter Czuk, Larry Fox, Brian Campbell, Paul Czamanske, Bill Allen and Gary Cheadle.

Cedar mixed-media artist Stephen Kostyshyn, who weaves basketry into his stunning ceramics, is a regular at many big art shows around the country, including the Smithsonian, but he really likes the M22. “The venues are small, which makes a perfect stop to rest, look at art and meet the artists. This creates a perfect balance to stopping at wineries, restaurants or viewing the fall colors.”

You can meet Kostyshyn at M22’s Clay venue in Cedar’s Cleveland Township Hall, along with ceramicists John and Sally Hebron, Michael and Mieko Kahn, Philip Wilson, Julie Kradel, Mark Williams and Paul Jeselskis.

At the M22 painters’ venue in Glen Arbor Township Hall, Popke says the feel will be museum-like, with big moveable walls showcasing the work of eight painters including Terry Walsh, Martha Eldredge, Joan Richmond, Jeff Condon, Kaye Krapohl, Elenora Hayes, and David Westerfield.

And in Leland’s Old Art Building, find Focus on Fiber, featuring the works of fiber artists Sue Ann Carpenter, Nancy Doughty, Linda Good, Catherine Siterlet and Christie Trout, who will show off their hand-woven clothing, baskets and other gorgeous fiber goods. The exhibit is interactive: Visitors can learn from the artists about shearing sheep and processing, dying and spinning wool into yarn. Artists will also demonstrate how to dress floor looms for handweaving.

The M22 Art2Art Fall Tour, sponsored by the nonprofit Suttons Bay Art Festival committee, runs Saturday, Oct. 9, 10 am to 6pm and Sunday, Oct. 10, 10am to 4pm. Find maps at m22art2art.com. Masks are required for the indoor venues.

Pictured: "DOCKS AND DUNES" by Joan Richmond; fine art birch and twig furniture pieces by Bill Perkins; pottery with basketry by Stephen Kostyshyn.