Hope Olson is a painter and mixed-media artist based in Holland, Michigan. Her art celebrates home, community, and slow, old-fashioned living. The compositions and colors of Hope’s abstracted still life and landscape paintings are inspired by her long-held affection for interior decorating, historic architecture, old country villages, and early 20th century art. Hope particularly borrows from the sensibilities of the Fauvist art movement, which emphasizes strong marks and colors that magnify mood and compel curiosity. She earned a B.S. in Interior Design from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and also focused her college coursework in studio art and marketing.
A duo of abstract and expressionism, movement and energy.
Kay Cassill, IWS, NWWS, MWCS
While Kay Cassill received a B.A. from University of Iowa with Honors in English in the `Writer’s Workshop’, her focus quickly changed to the visual arts when she found herself in Greenwich Village among the avant-garde painters of the era. From there she moved to Paris taking postgraduate work at the Academe de la Grande Chaumiere. She continued traveling and moved on to Bandol on the Riviera. Eventually she traveled to Carrara, Florence and Rome – for the art – and marriage to artist and writer R.V. Cassill. Returning to New York, Cassill continued postgraduate work at the New School with artist Julian Levi. Moving back to Iowa she took up postgraduate work with famed print maker Mauricio Lasansky and painter James Lechay. While there she became a member of the Iowa Print Group. She has also taken workshops with Karen Blackwood, Donna Zagotta and Mel Stabin. Eventually she settled in Providence, RI and Cape Cod. Cassill currently winters in Michigan but maintains a home and studio in Truro, MA. where she spends some months each year. She continues today creating paintings in oil and watermedia.
Style
Over her long career Kay has approached her subject matter with intensity whether it was while carving into copper plates, painting in water media or oil on various substrates or drawing with pen and ink. Her most recent concentration has been painting with water media on Yupo and oils on canvas and linen. As for her approach to painting she feels closest to the Figurative Expressionists. Her favorite subjects include figures interpreting her story-telling ideas but she sometimes side-steps when taken by a particular land or seascape.
Rachael Van Dyke
Rachael Van Dyke is a mid-career artist creating abstract landscape work inspired by living off the grid in the Blue Ridge mountains. Van Dyke is an avid traveler as an artist-in-residence and has participated in numerous national and international residencies. These residencies, particularly ones abroad, create boundaries that she is forced to work with and cause her to alter her technique. Most of these obstacles are related to traveling abroad; adjusting to new studio space constraints, change of temperature, lack or loss of art materials, poor foreign language skills, and shipping limitations. These boundaries also create stimulation for Rachael as an artist as she is forced to understand and come to terms with her limitations to see what can be created. Being open to a new color palette or a new visual language to express the land is necessary. She chooses to explore the region through walking or bicycling, visiting museums and historic sites, and trying her hand at engaging with local residents. Each body of work is influenced by place and tells a story of the people and land that she’s encountered.
Welcome to Fresh Air. Showcasing 6 different perspectives on the world outdoors. This exhibit will be running till the end of May.
Dylan Strzynski is a Michigan artist whose mixed media work combines drawing, painting and influence from his background in printmaking. He is inspired by the woody marine landscape of the north where he grew up and the area surrounding his home in rural western Washtenaw County. Focusing on landscape and vernacular architecture, his work addresses concerns about the environment and poverty by telling stories characterized by mystery and subtle humor.
Hope Olson is a painter and mixed-media artist based in Holland, Michigan. Her art celebrates home, community, and slow, old-fashioned living. The compositions and colors of Hope’s abstracted still life and landscape paintings are inspired by her long-held affection for interior decorating, historic architecture, old country villages, and early 20th century art. Hope particularly borrows from the sensibilities of the Fauvist art movement, which emphasizes strong marks and colors that magnify mood and compel curiosity. She earned a B.S. in Interior Design from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourb
onnais, Illinois, and also focused her college coursework in studio art and marketing.
Rachael Van Dyke is a mid-career artist. She is an avid traveler with an upcoming residency with Cill Rialaig Arts Center in Ireland. She has participated recently in residencies in the historic town of Tusa, Sicily with Officina Stamperia del Notaio and on the remote island of Isle Royale in Lake Superior with the United States National Park Service. Van Dyke’s residencies have also included Studio Ginestrelle, Assisi, Italy, Le Jardin Botanique, in Marnay sur Seine, France, TICA with the Art Institute of Chicago, and Les Tasis located in the Ardeche Valley of Southern France. She is also a Fulbright Memorial Fund teacher recipient to Japan. Van Dyke has had solo art exhibitions with the Forest Hills Fine Art Center, the Power Center of Performing Arts in Ann Arbor, MI and the University of Michigan Hospital Gifts for Art program. She earned her MAE at the Kendall College of Art and Design and has worked 14 years as an art and design educator for all grade levels including adjunct instructor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI. Rachael Van Dyke has participated in numerous public presentations and adult workshops including talks on art and creativity, art and the spiritual, and on how space and place influence a body of work. Van Dyke also engages in social activism through artmaking. The Future People, the design team of Van Dyke and her husband Cameron, currently is exhibiting work on tour with the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.
Anne kindl’s pastels have been featured in three Breeders’ Cup commemorative editions andKeeneland and Kentucky Homes & Gardens publications. She has installations in public and private art collections including Buffalo Trace Distillery, The Kentucky Theatre, St. Joseph Hospital and University of Kentucky Medical Center. She has had her work featured in films for Indie and Lifetime Movies. She was awarded the 2016 Best in Kentucky artist by the Lexington Art League. Anne’s recent work has been selected to be in the Pastel Journal’s 20th Pastel 100 and the 33rd International Pastel Societies Juried Exhibition.
Virginia Kretz has been a member of the Athena Society for over 40 Years. She is most known for her soft guache landscapes and lavish use of greens and blues. As a premier Toledo based artist, Virginia has won countless awards and high praise among landscape art collectors, traditional art lovers and beyond. Kretz’s work continues to be a staple at Fuller Art house and the traveling Athena shows throughout the area.
Cody R. Winter was raised within the small farming community of Riga, Michigan; a place where life progressed at a slower pace and the bucolic, Midwestern scenery was never too far away. Growing up, he was considerably fascinated by the arts, which was the foremost influence on choosing his major upon entering Lourdes University. After graduating in 2015, he would begin his career within the art world; always striving to be surrounded by his craft he would continue to create while being employed at the River Centre Gallery. His premier inspiration continues to be the work of the old masters, in particular: Martin Johnson Heade’s sublimity, George Inness’ intrigue, Frederic Edwin Church’s verisimilitude, and Claude Monet’s sense of color being his greatest influences.
