ART-FAIRING IN TRAVERSE CITY

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – As a working artist, Don Shepard shows his sculptures at art fairs all around the country.

But his hands-down favorite is the Traverse Bay Outdoor Art Fair, held in a grove of ancient pines on the Northwestern Michigan College campus in Traverse City. Now in its 51^st year, the annual exhibition (scheduled this year for July 30) attracts 120 artists and 10,000 visitors from the United States and Canada.

“It’s a big deal, all right,” said Shepard. “For me, it’s the biggest one-day show I do. It’s done by artists, for artists, and that’s what I like about it.”

A few miles north, in the port of Suttons Bay, organizers are making preparations for their own outdoor exhibition. The Suttons Bay Community Art Festival is a mere baby when compared to Traverse City’s art fair – but it lasts two days (Aug. 6-7) and includes 90 juried artists, which is about as many booths as the village’s grassy bayfront park can hold.

“Right from the start, we knew we wanted to make it a really fun event, which is why we chose the word ‘festival,’” said organizer Cherrie Stege. “It’s a favorite with a lot of the artists, and with art lovers, for that very reason.”

Although the Traverse City area is still best known as a destination for golf, boating and other outdoor recreation, it’s also gained a reputation as a place of unusual artistic activity. It was ranked with places like Nantucket and Taos in John Villani’s 2005 book “100 Best Art Towns in America,” and USA Today called it “one of 10 great places for big-city art and small-town feel.”

Artists and artisans have been settling in the communities around Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay for decades, drawn by the same natural beauty and relaxed lifestyle that makes the Traverse City area a magnet for summer tourists. This influx of talent has spawned a network of tightly-knit art colonies in places like Glen Arbor, Elk Rapids and Suttons Bay, complete with galleries, workshops and studios.

An easy way to sample some of that creative ferment is to visit one or two of the colorful art fairs and festivals that brighten the summer season. Many visitors now plan their vacations around such favorite events as the annual Fiber Festival held each October in the village of Leland, which features original artwork in textiles, weavings, knits, yarns and even paper, or the Aug. 20 Downtown Art Fair, where Traverse City’s streets are shut down for a juried fair featuring over 90 Midwestern and national artists.

That same evening, local art mavens have created a hybrid event that combines Traverse City’s artsy vibe with its growing fame as an up-and-coming “foodie” town: it’s the annual Traverse City Wine & Art Festival, now in its third year. Held on the spacious lawn of the Village at Grand Traverse Commons (the city’s former mental asylum) the festival features 30 tents filled with high quality art “for purchase and appreciation” – together with food, desserts, wines from the nearby Leelanau Peninsula and Old Mission Peninsula, and live musical performances.

A more recent, and increasingly popular phenomenon are “art walks” where shoppers are encouraged to wander from store to gallery to studio, viewing artworks and meeting artists while sampling hors d’oeuvres and sipping wine.

Downtown Traverse City holds two of these popular evenings, one in spring, the other in autumn. Suttons Bay also has two art walks – a “summer solstice” version in late June and a “fall finale” in October. Elk Rapids makes do with a single fall art walk, a day-long event they call Art Beat.

Traverse City also boasts one particularly noteworthy museum devoted entirely to the fine arts. The Dennos Museum Center opened its doors in 1991, and has become the region’s leading art museum, sponsoring major exhibitions of Egyptian, Chinese and Japanese art as well as shows of national and international interest.

The Dennos is one of Traverse City’s great treasures. Tucked away in a grove of tall pines at Northwestern Michigan College, it’s regularly hailed one of the finest small art museums in the nation , with a permanent collection that includes one of the world’s most extensive troves of sculpture, prints and drawings by Inuit artists of the Canadian Arctic.

“Our mandate from the beginning was to bring things to this community that other organizations and facilities couldn’t bring here on their own,” said museum director Eugene Jenneman.