Stamelos Gallery

Denise Willing-Booher transforms living and inanimate subjects into dynamic watercolor paintings. Through expressive shapes, dramatic perspectives, light, and color, she makes the commonplace captivating and challenges conventional ideas of beauty.

Nature and the people who touch my soul are my greatest inspirations. Whether painting in the studio or en plein air, I seek to capture the spirit of a person, place, or scene. Using close perspectives, composition, and light, I strive to convey the wonder, beauty, and emotion I see in the world.

Watercolor fascinates me because it is unpredictable. I begin with loose sketches, value studies, and paint tests in my sketchbook. When water, pigment, and paper meet, they create a unique wash—that is where the magic begins. My value study provides a starting point, but the painting evolves as I work. I step back often to observe what it needs and when it is complete. The result is rarely what I first imagined, and that discovery brings me joy.

— Denise Willing Booher

This exhibition explores my aesthetic choices over the last 20 plus years. Not truly a retrospective because the scope is limited, the work is more of a survey; selected paintings which represent the various bodies of work undertaken over more than two decades.

Our experiences help us construct meaning, respond to others and define our cultural frame of reference. Similarly, the artist impacts their audience through the construction of images based on their connections, sensibilities and experiences. This is what I term as an aesthetic frame of reference, hence the title of this exhibition.

The works from 2020 through 2026 are heavily influenced by my childhood; exposure to the aesthetic choices made by a father who was an eccentric and complicated person, unable to fully be himself and thus, chose to transform our living spaces to communicate his vision of the world.

The paintings from 2003 to 2014 explore abstraction of the landscape; translating the physical attributes of land (and sky) as if I were zooming in on a particular surface or what a cross section of a surface might look like. As well, they highlight use of disparate materials and chemicals to create visually textured surfaces.

As the viewer, I ask you to take in my work with the understanding that while the genre of abstraction depends a great deal on spontaneity, this does not necessarily mean the act of creating is a thoughtless endeavor, where visual aesthetics are ruled by happenstance.

— Anita Bates PhD, MFA

Michigan Mosaic Artist Michelle Sider will present more than 40 original works she created between 2009 and 2026 for her largest solo exhibition to date.

This exhibition unfolds in three sections: Leaving Darkness, Celebrating Radiance, and Light Endures, each offering a unique perspective on light as a metaphor for memory, spiritual reflection, and resilience. As you move through the exhibition, colors shift, surfaces breathe, and textures animate scenes drawn from nature, history, and personal experience. This work is meant to be experienced slowly, attentively, and with openness.

Laura Cavanagh: Perchance to Dream features two bodies of work; one consisting of imagined, collaged portraits of women who never existed. This collection of works is influenced heavily by portraiture from the Renaissance Era. The other collection consists of simple, imagined interior and exterior spaces inspired by the mid-20th century and personal memories.

Looking at these bodies of work, one might think they were created by the hands of two different artists, since, visually, they appear so strikingly dissimilar. However, Cavanagh has always been a curious person. As such, she has never stuck to just one "type" of artwork or worked in only one medium. She is constantly seeking out new materials to work with as well as ways to incorporate them. Cavanagh began her portrait series over a decade ago, when, at the time, they were merely pen and ink drawings. Those evolved into more elaborate drawings, which then progressed into even more intricate and ornate scenes incorporating fiber and paper elements.

When have you last had a good, or even great, conversation? Was it with an old friend, colleague at work, or in a spirited debate with a stranger (soon perhaps, to be a friend) where you were challenged by someone or some idea that you had never considered? For me, the best conversations - where the resulting insights "stick" - are those which have depth and humor. Those where at the end I have had to conclude that my way of looking at the world has changed - when some new learning, some new joy from the experience, or appreciation of the subject at hand, was the result. Over the last (large!) number of years, my best and longest-lasting conversational partner has been with Glass, and the process of making sculpture.

—JB Wood