Becoming
By Bart Ingraham
“My interest in carving started when my wife and I were in the Peace Corps in the Phillippines. We visited a mountain tribe in Bagio who carved and sold items in the tourist trade. My reaction was, I can do that, and so it started. Upon return I started creating items which were incorporated into our living space."
Interstate NOW UROK
By Scott Froschauer
“How does one express humanity? I think it’s pretty complicated. Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes less so. I don’t always know what a particular piece means and I love to discover new perspectives in conversations with viewers.
You Are Enough
By Scott Froschauer
“How does one express humanity? I think it’s pretty complicated. Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes less so. I don’t always know what a particular piece means and I love to discover new perspectives in conversations with viewers.
Start
By Scott Froschauer
“How does one express humanity? I think it’s pretty complicated. Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes less so. I don’t always know what a particular piece means and I love to discover new perspectives in conversations with viewers.
One Way Heart
By Scott Froschauer
“How does one express humanity? I think it’s pretty complicated. Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes less so. I don’t always know what a particular piece means and I love to discover new perspectives in conversations with viewers.
The Peace Signs
By Scott Froschauer
“How does one express humanity? I think it’s pretty complicated. Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes less so. I don’t always know what a particular piece means and I love to discover new perspectives in conversations with viewers.
MENDING HEART
By Michael Angelo Magnotta
“In what felt like a natural progression, an outgrowth of interests and skills, I began welding in 2008. Long infatuated by this process, the first glimpse through the lens of a welder’s helmet of metal fusing together brought a thrill unsurpassed."
GRAND TRAVERSE PORTAGE
By Dewey Blocksma
Grand Traverse Portage was installed in the Walk of Art in 2018, the third of Dewey Blocksma's works to be displayed in the park. Blocksma is a Michigan artist who earned a B.S. degree in Chemistry from Wheaton College in Illinois, and who worked as an emergency room physician for ten years after graduating from Northwestern University Medical School. He is now an artist full-time.
Amelia
By Ritch Branstrom
Growing up on the west side of Detroit, the son of a diesel mechanic and the youngest of four boys, a young Ritch Branstrom observed in awe and wonder the things happening around him. Having older brothers something was always happening in the garage. From an early age motorcycles and cars were fascinating. In his early teens he started making contraptions. Watching his father totally reconstruct the sheet metal on the bottom of a van showed him that with a little bit of scrap metal and patience one could create almost anything.
Walk of Art Sign
By Art Brown
Marking the entrance to the Walk of Art is a specially designed piece commissioned to Art Brown of Torch Tip Iron Works in Central Lake. While Brown modestly describes himself as “welder” and “blacksmith,” he has, for 18 years, been a prolific producer of decorative and utilitarian architectural art forms.
Musician
By Maureen Bergquist Gray
"My sculpture is the expression of the universal energy that I tap into. This is the energy that flows through and around each one of us. I depend on the natural forces around me to be my guide, the energy of the material, the whisper of the wind, the ancient ones coaxing me onward. It is my privilege to listen. If my visual description is persuasive the viewer will see a glimmer of light radiating from these forms and then look within themselves for meaning creating their own version of this age old story."
Becca Triumphs
By Ann Gildner
Ann Gildner is artist-in-residence at the Iron One Studio in Cheboygan, MI, where the independent artists who are its members design, work and collaborate in making metal artwork. Becca Triumphs is somewhat autobiographical in nature, reflecting the artist's own triumph after surviving breast cancer.
Singing Pail of Dreams
By John Goss
John Goss is a nationally recognized sculptor, specializing in realistic wildlife sculptures created through the use of recycled metals. John is a full time artist operating out of his Northern Michigan studio. His work is displayed at public and private locations throughout the United States.
Botanical Forms
By David Petrakovitz
Of his work, Petrakovitz writes that Botanical Forms is comprised of elements that, when combined, create positive and negative spaces that interact with the environment. It is constructed by welding the elements together with a powder-coated finish. Petrakovitz also has works in public exhibits at the Michigan Legacy Art Park, Fuerst Park in Novi, and in Chelsea, Michigan.
Seedpod 9 (Buzz)
By David Greenwood
"Most of my sculptures over the past 30 years have been figurative, life-sized and metaphorical. They derive a lot from Folk Art and seem to suggest narratives. With the Seedpod Series, begun in 2004, I have turned to an interest in pure form and in abstraction from Nature. I cannot resist picking up seedpods. I collect them wherever I travel. They prove to me every time that no one can beat Mother Nature as designer. Their diversity is awe inspiring. "
Yesterday I Saw Mountains
By Nick Preneta
This sculpture was installed in the Walk of Art in 2018. “My work as an artist focuses on change. The medium I use to express this is wood. Wood has the characteristic of being able to expand and contract as the moisture in the environment changes.
Millie
By Ann Gildner
Gildner describes Millie as an abstract work, a study of three shapes in three different metals. Her designs were plasma cut, then welded and pinned together.
Off Balance
By Jeff Whyman
Jeff Whyman is a St. Louis born Florida artist who works in steel, inspired in part by childhood memories of fascination with the const of the St Louis Arch. A favorite subject matter is the human figure, a consequence, he says, of “my desire to recreate human emotion and depict personality. The Whyman sculpture in Walk of Art is a steel rendering of whimsical little fellow caught (and titled), Off Balance. His work is in public, corporate, and private collections nation wide.
Toobers and Zots
By David Petrakovitz
Toobers and Zots was installed in the Walk of Art in 2018.
People and Places
By Mark Warwick
People and Places was installed in the Walk of Art in 2018. “Steel can transform – from a liquid to a solid, a solid to a liquid. The sheets of steel used in this work are welded together to form shapes that merge and twist to invoke a connection between people and landscape. The viewer senses the figurative form but is also reminded of the similarity to the natural landscape surrounding them. The connection is one of reliance – one without the other evokes loneliness. But when people inhabit these spaces, they give it meaning."
Hardwoods II, III and IV
By Sam Soet
Sam Soet is a subtractive wood sculptor who currently works in central Michigan. Throughout his life he has studied all aspects of fine art and worked in many construction fields. Sam studied fine art at Ball State University and spent a summer learning the art of wood sculpture from master sculptor Leslie Scruggs. Sam’s work has been shown in California, Indiana, and Michigan.
Grand Traverse Monolith
By Leif Sporck
With over 500 unique designs, the mission of Sporck Tileart is to make ceramic tiles like no one else -- to push the limits of ceramic tile art in our own unique style. Nature and life in the great outdoors inspires our work.
Bouquet
By Andrew Kline
“I’m not a conceptual artist. There are no lofty ideas behind any of my work. I welcome the viewer to make their own decisions and their own words. I would much rather raise questions than give answers. I’m an object maker.
Infinite Clearance
By Scott Froschauer
“How does one express humanity? I think it’s pretty complicated. Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes less so. I don’t always know what a particular piece means and I love to discover new perspectives in conversations with viewers.
Keeping It Together
by Bart Ingraham
My interest in carving started when my wife and I were in the Peace Corps in the Phillippines. We visited a mountain tribe in Bagio who carved and sold items in the tourist trade. My reaction was, I can do that, and so it started.
The Single Twist
By Mary Angers
Mary C. Angers, multi-disciplinary artist, was born in Manhattan on July 22, 1958. She has resided in Long Branch, New Jersey for the past 20 years. Working in two and three-dimensional media as well as video, television, light and computer generated work, she has shown extensively in Manhattan, New Jersey, France, California, Florida and other states around the United States, as well as doing public artwork around the United States, Canada, and abroad.
Matilda
By Julie Kradel
Matilda was installed in the Walk of Art in 2018. "I love working in clay. I love being in the barn. I watch my animals, the way they interact, how I interact with them. What I observe consciously and unconsciously eventually embodies the clay one way or another."
BACK TO BACK
By Bart Ingraham
Art Rapids was pleased to add two more of Ingraham’s sculptures to the Walk of Art in 2018. His sculpture, The Dancers, was one of the first pieces ever installed in the exhibit in 2013, and different sculptures of his have been on display continuously through the existence of the Walk of Art.