“When artists first emerge from learning institutions of varying levels, they are allowed to immerse themselves in their art for a few exciting and productive years before they inevitably are forced to stumble into a career, often at the expense of their art.
Decades stack up as they pass their 30s and 40s, with time that once was for the studio now consumed by work, family, friends, and other seemingly endless obligations. Gallery exhibitions - when they are able to visit - are full of beautiful pieces by people who remind them of younger version of themselves.
Cultivate acknowledges that ageism is built into the systems of galleries and museums, evident by the opportunities that forgo their experience and work in favor of younger artists. There is no annual list of “50 over 50” artists to watch. Some galleries unabashedly seek artists under 35 with seemingly no self-awareness of the blatant discrimination. Older artists are forced into a difficult situation. Do they edit their portfolio to remove the shows that their past selves celebrated as accomplishments in order to seem younger than they are? Do they lie about their age in hopes for better opportunities?
During their 50s, many artists re-emerge from a heads-down focus of family and career to take stock in themselves thus far. Some have held onto art making all along. Some realign their lives so they can rediscover themselves and their studios once more.”
- Bettina Cousineau, Artist & Cultivate Curator
“I have always wanted to be an artist. Always. How I defined being an artist has changed constantly throughout the years. I wanted to be a comic book artist, then a stage designer and scene painter, then an illustrator, a portrait artist and finally a fine artist. I was always studying, practicing, “getting ready”, getting good enough. I worked at my craft as I served in the Navy for 21 years, I worked at my craft as I worked as an RN for 18 years. I entered shows, I created small shows, achieved some local recognition, but never took the big risk to get gallery representation. I wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t good enough yet, my work wouldn’t sell yet. 1-13-23, I had a seizure and found out I had a brain tumor. 1-25-23, I had surgery and they cut it out. I am in recovery. I am going to live, but I am done waiting.”
Born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1962, Richard’s first artistic influences came from the figures and depictions of movement found in the comic books of the 1970s, He was fascinated with how the artists, of that genre, could influence and enhance the stories found within the pages through their work. Growing up just outside Washington DC his first exposure to Fine Art occurred in the halls of the Smithsonian, where the painting Stag at Sharkey’s by George Bellows was on display. This one painting allowed him to see, on canvas, the same dynamism he grew up admiring in his beloved comics. His opening world view exposed him to the French Impressionists, where he fell in love with new ways to use color, light and brushstrokes to tell the stories found in life. He was inspired by the gestural brilliance seen in the figurative paintings of John Singer Sargent, where he saw realism could have a beautiful soul and portraiture could come alive.
Richard has developed a style that acknowledges his influences, while remaining truly his own, describing his work as a kind of “Stylized Realism”. In his most recent, award winning, works he portrays large crowds and the circumstances that caused those gatherings. His complex works explore the personality of each crowd as a whole, and the nuances found in the individuals within. Richard’s formal education in painting took place at Roanoke College in Salem Virginia, and the School of Visual Arts in NYC. His work has been shown in galleries in Maine, Virginia, and California and currently his work can be seen in various national and international shows, on his website and in his growing social media presence. Richard now resides in Thousand Oaks CA.
“I strongly believe that artists have no shelf life. Aging is a normal process for every human being and studies show significant health improvement and stability for older people who engage in creative endeavors. The important aspect is doing what you love the most, age should not come in the way of following your passion and dreams. For me that passion and love for what I do has not changed with my aging but only keeps growing. To remain excited about my art is what keeps me going and surviving. That is the main essence of my life. I feel the “art” is whatmatters, how does the age of an artist matter or when did they start? Aging has helped me evolve with my artwork too. And that evolution can come only through experience. That is another interesting part of my journey. Reflecting on my past work and how I transition to the next idea and concept enriches my mind to a great extent. My portfolio that I have enclosed here shows the evolution of an artist and encompasses work of about the last 10 years.”
Raised in India, Boisali Biswas is a studio artist who works in mixed-media fibers. Her formative years during her BFA were spent at Visva-Bharati University, founded by Rabindranath Tagore at Shantiniketan. The profound experience through her educational journey has stayed with her, and continues to influence her work. She completed her MFA at Bowling Green State University. Living in this country for over three decades, and adapting to Western styles and inspirations in concert with her background has made her Art into a cauldron of multicultural assemblages that are a unique feast for the eyes.
“There’s a belief that sometimes comes around that older artists create landscapes or portraits of their grandchildren. Art that’s representative of their age. My work is bold abstracts and expressionism and when I meet art lovers and collectors for the first time, there’s a couple seconds where the look on their face seems to say, ‘I thought you’d be younger’. I’ve been fortunate enough to not experience straight out ageism personally, but I have caught conversations and read comments online basically saying ‘If you’re over 50 and still haven’t had your big break, your art isn’t good enough.’ That can have an effect on an artist, wondering if our art truly isn’t good enough and if we should continue creating.”
W.S. Cranmore’s artworks are known for their distinctive geometric patterns, bold lines and borders, and nontraditional composition. At the intersection of Expressionism, Geometric Abstraction and Pop Art, W.S. Cranmore’s artworks meld early modernist with later post-modernist influences. His art invites subjective interpretation, emotional introspection and personal appreciation, telling personal stories and re-imagining memories in a uniquely unconventional way. But it would be incorrect to say these artworks are created with a specific goal in mind. Instead, Cranmore focuses on the process, letting the paintings imagine themselves into being along a creative journey that starts and ends with music.
W.S. Cranmore lives in Milwaukie, Oregon. Of Irish heritage, he (who used to own and operate a Celtic Music promotion company ‘67 Music’) is also an Irish Language enthusiast. When not painting, the Artist enjoys spending time with his family, and ‘watching his daughters grow into independent human beings.’
W.S. Cranmore
Elaine Dalcher
44th Street Traffic Jam: September
Oil on Canvas, 2022
36” x 36”
“In my mind, age has ripened my knowledge and ability to continuously hone my skill and vision. I have probably encountered more discrimination for being a life-long queer woman than for being an old woman. I don’t feel old, but age has compromised my health over the years. This more than anything has challenged my energy and creative process.”
Elaine has been creating art since she was a child, where she was surrounded by the 1950’s modernist paintings that her parents exhibited in their home gallery, and she has never quit. Today, her work is represented in corporate, public and private collections throughout the US and abroad.
Elaine received her BA in 1974 (Thomas Jefferson College / GVSU) and her MFA in 1989 (Western Michigan University). She taught art in the Grand Rapids Public Schools for 34 years, where she received numerous awards and honors. Elaine has always painted, taught and exhibited her work. Her first solo show (1980) was at the now-closed Grand Rapids Gallery for Women’s Art, just blocks from where Cultivate Grand Rapids now stands! She received the YWCA Tribute Award for the Arts in 2012, as well as the On-the-Town (M-Live) People’s Choice Award for Artist of the Year. Elaine has shown her work extensively in galleries, museums and community exhibition spaces throughout Michigan and beyond.
Elaine is a founding member of Tanglefoot Building Artists, where she has grown her studio practice since 1988, and where she continues to paint, exhibit her work, and teach.
“You could say that my photography work is the result of ageism. As a former dancer, I watched myself be edged out of the field slowly by younger bodies. This was the case not only in the context of physical work, but intellectual as well. I let go of performing but continued as a choreographer and director for many years. Yet still saw younger choreographers replacing freelance positions that I once held. Photography has filled the creative void that grew as I let go of my dance career. On a personal note, in a meeting with a theater director just prior to the pandemic, I was told they had hired a different choreographer for a position that I was in contention for, because, “frankly, they are younger.” And that conversation was a turning point for me. I began to feel driven and determined not to fade away and not to let ageism define me. I have found a wonderful and unique way to express myself through photography, and no one can put an age limit on my photography work!”
Accomplished multi-hyphenate artist, (photographer, jewelry maker, theatre artist and former dancer) Maureen Janson Heintz creates unique images through the exploration of long exposure photography. Her work has appeared on the CD cover for Karen Olivo’s, Leave, as illustrations in Getting Started in Ballet by Anna Paskevska, and on the cover of Acting the Song by Tracey Moore. She was recently an artist-in-residence at the Glen Arbor Arts Center in Northern Michigan where her work has also been featured in two GAAC SMALL WORKS shows as well as in the recent juried You Are T/Here show. In Madison, Wisconsin, she has been a part of the Forward Art Prize show, Forge at Madison Brass Works, and After the End of the World at Overture Center for the Arts, among others. Maureen is the photographer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department, enjoys head-shot photography in Madison, WI, Chicago and Los Angeles, and continues to work as a choreographer for theatre and concert dance.
Judith Hopkins
From the Series: Visible Lines, Untitled (Self-Portrait as Swimmer)
Charcoal on Paper, 2016 79” x 48”
“As a woman and especially an older woman I grew tired of my work being ignored and decided to stare back!”
Judith Hopkins is a multi-media artist and writer. She came west to attend graduate school at California Institute of the Arts. After receiving her MFA, she has taught art at community centers, community colleges throughout Southern California and the California Youth Authority. After completing two community art projects funded by grants from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, she co-founded and established a nonprofit girls’ empowerment project that used horses to introduce girls to the arts and sciences. Judith believes art has the power to transform our lives by giving us the room to creatively explore visual perceptions thereby widening our world. Her work, though not always autobiographical, is often informed by her own biography.
“At age 73, the reality is that 2022 was professionally the best year I ever had. Luck, chance, right place, right time and continued studio practice over almost 5 decades aligned with my head spinning that the world was still interested in what I had to say visually. The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts bought a piece for their permanent collection. A national clay publication invited me to write an article and published it last Fall. I exhibited in several well received National shows and won several awards for my work. Ageism affects me as I am conscious of my age. Like scarring or a physical deformity I am self-conscious of having my face or hands photographed on Instagram. In actuality, I am reacting to stereotypes of aging, rather than being victimized by it. Aging has affected how I work. I grieve the loss of strength I had as a youth. I am acutely aware that my abilities have a very limited shelf life. I can no longer work long studio days. However, I am happy to be active in the art world on my own terms. My professional life feels full.”
Madeline Kaczmarczyk is an award winning Michigan artist known for her mixed media teapots incorporating thousands of glass seed beads on the surface of her hand built clay teapots. She studied at Michigan State University with an art degree from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI as well as advanced studies at Pewabic Pottery in Detroit, MI. She worked for many years as an Adjunct Professor of Art in Ceramics at Aquinas College and has taught in a number of Michigan colleges and art centers. Her numerous commissions and collections include the Hyatt Regency World Headquarters in Chicago, and the Racine Art Museum along with many national groups and solo exhibits. Awards include the Grand Rapids Festival Regional shows in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 as well as the 91st Contemporary Art Exhibit at the Muskegon Art Museum in Michigan in 2019.
“Aging can be a bumper to career advancement for an aspiring artist. Ironically, the cliché “older and wiser” holds true to most visual artists. In my case, although I had some very good art teachers as mentors when I was a teenager, I was not particularly quick at learning what I was taught. When I resumed drawing and painting by joining the regular drawing sessions at GVA about 10 years ago I felt like I was in a better shape learning new tricks and techniques as well as practicing old ones. I also felt like I have a better sense of what I am doing and what I want to achieve whereas I was merely mimicking my teachers many years ago. However, as an aspiring artist in my early sixties, I know time is not on my side and I must confront the society’s pervasive stereotypes about old age, let alone my background as a self-taught amateur, and an immigrant from China. Although nearly every aspiring artist has down-beat moments, my age supplies more reasons for self-doubt. Still, I call myself an artist because I am getting more serious about making art as I am getting older. When I am engaged in drawing and painting, I forget my age and I act and feel like a child, even more so than my teenager self.”
Leon Lou was born and raised in Shanghai, China. When he was a teenager, he dreamed of becoming an artist and spent many after-school hours on drawing and painting under the tutelage of art teachers who were influenced by the French and Russian academic traditions before the disastrous cultural revolution. However, life has its own logic. Decades later he became a tenured professor of psychology at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He did not pick up paint brushes again until about ten years ago, when he felt the irrepressible urge to do what he loved to do in his teenage years.
He loves to draw and paint from life whatever that appeals to him aesthetically. He loves to depict strong and interesting forms of human face and figure, plants, and landscapes. He loves mood-suggesting colors and forms. He has tried various painting media and drawing tools, including watercolor, acrylics, gouache, oil, soft and hard pastels, oil pastel, and wax-based pastel. Drawing and painting from life has also provided him with a playground for testing psychological theories of depiction and artful visions that he has been working on for years on as a cognitive psychologist. Lou’s paintings have exhibited in various local and regional art exhibitions and venues, including Grand Valley Artists, ICCF, Biggby Coffee shop, Frames Unlimited, West Michigan Regional Art Competition, Michigan Contemporary Art Exhibition at Muskegon, and ArtPrize, of which was publicized in an interview by local TV Channel 13 “On your side”. The project gained Lou the precious and rewarding experience of depicting and interacting with people of diverse backgrounds, age, genders, who came from all over the world.
Estelle Roberge
Book of Cranes: Pages 1-2
Giclee of Original Collage, 2022 9” x 15”
At the age of sixty-nine, I now live an artists’ life and it seems near to paradise every day. It is the life that I had always wished for, a time when I am fully an artist. I collage, bake muffins, send in applications for residencies, write essays, build costumes, walk the mountains and read. Though I have household chores and home maintenance, to do, each day is also spent in visual practice. Generally, I do not feel marginalized nor do I experience ageism, yet I know it exists. I have had to redefine aging. I go into the studio as my new job. It has taken time to reemerge, but the new work has been well received, even chosen for juried shows. I’ve accepted that I will not become well known. Yet I bring integrity, discipline and research to the creative process. It is a form of home-based activism. I find hope through imagination. I process the violence of the world through positive creative practices. It is like a counter revolution. I am a carrier of visual observations. My tenacity allows me to endure grief and the sadness of injustice. My gift, a gift that I do not take lightly, allows me to endure, to speak out and be hopeful at a time in history that is often destructive. The most valuable lesson aging has taught me is that of artistic growth. The relationship between making art and daily living has to do with practice, consistency, and undoing. Through daily practice, I dig deep. Although I struggle with some of the same objectives that I struggled with forty years ago—the two dimensional surface, unifying all parts into one vision, red juxtaposed to green, a touch of yellow, a little orange—I now go deeper than color and shapes, in search of enduring meaning, that of being unified as a whole person.
Estelle Roberge grew up in Biddeford, Maine, the sixth of nine children, in a Franco-American Irish-Canadian household. After graduating from the nearby Portland School of Art in Printmaking and the University of Southern Maine in Art Education, she traveled west in search of employment. In 1990, she began a teaching career at Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Arizona, a college dedicated to the preservation of Navajo traditional life. Later, Roberge pursued an MFA at Idaho State University with a focus on wilderness desert landscapes in South Central Utah. After receiving a MFA degree in Painting, she taught in Maine and Utah for five years. Finally, she made a home in Magdalena, New Mexico where she continues to reside.
Roberge’s teaching practice and interest in wilderness is interwoven in her daily artistic practice. Her work has focused on the interplay of memory, place and presence within wild terrains. Vast wilderness settings inspire her to abstract landscapes. Pre-Covid, she began to think and paint about those who are not in the wilderness by choice, but are forced to live there by climate emergencies, the refugees at various borders around the world. This emergency has occupied her mind for decades. During the Pandemic her painting practice was altered. The practice of collage became her way of coping with pandemic panic.
Her works have been included in the New Mexico Acclaimed Artist Initiative and the Eco Art Project, The Bristol Art Museum, and the Kolaj Festival in New Orleans. Currently, she is preparing for three upcoming solo exhibitions at the Sun Valley Museum of Art in Idaho, The Charles C. Thomas Gallery at Maine College of Art, as well as the Kind of a Small Array in Magdalena, New Mexico. Her work is also featured in several private collections in California, New Mexico, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Idaho, and Canada.
“I consider myself in my prime artistically and it has nothing to do with age. I find it curious how young artists are sought after so much more than older artists. Why does the industry think an “emerging artist” is a young artist? Ageism is merely another form of prejudice, born out of ignorance. Age doesn’t have anything to do with where you are in your career. Age has nothing to do with the amount of talent you have, and age has much less to do with how well you can execute your craft than anyone would think. It is merely a number. I have more time now than ever before to spend in the studio. My art has improved immensely since doing so. What was once reduced to a spare time hobby is again a full time passion. I’d like to share my work with more than just a few, but finding ways to do so is a challenge. Shining a light on older artists is going to shine a light on some amazing talent.”
I was an “Army brat” born on a U.S. military base in Misawa, Japan. Luckily for me, my father was also an accomplished artist. We were stationed in Japan, Washington DC, New York and eventually settled in Michigan, where I grew up. I have been drawing all my life, taking classes and private lessons up through high school, with published newspaper illustrations along the way. All of my artistic training, interest and practice culminated in an acceptance into the University of Michigan’s School of Pharmacy. Sounds like a misprint but was actually a well-intentioned parental steering that led me on a 3-year detour. Pharmacy predictably proved a poor match for someone craving a creative outlet. Walking through Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design opened my eyes to what I was missing. Inter-school transfers followed, eventually leading to an introduction to colored pencils, and to a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. After graduation I worked in print advertising and product photography, married, and 4 years later started a family. Three kids took priority and I turned to free lancing, juried shows, and commissions. Kids grown, I now work full time as owner of Pencilmarks Studio in Traverse City, Michigan. My subject matter comes from my favorite place to be, nature.
Back to the Wall, the Being Slept
Hand-stitched, Waxed, Single strand embroidery floss, 7 colors on paper, 2016
4.5” x 3.25”
Hand-stitched, waxed, single strand, shaded embroidery floss, 2 colors on paper, 2016
4.5” x 3.25”
“At 75, my imagination is still on fire with ideas for new work: installations. The stitched work is very labor intensive and takes a long time to execute. Transporting installations is costly and requires physical assistance. Recently I applied for an exhibition and when I was sent the names of the recipients, it was obvious that people much younger than myself, who had already had museum shows, were selected. Ageism may or may not have been a factor. Nevertheless, rejection has lost its sting. Having to postpone my art career for 30 + years may make me feel like I am trying to catch up with artists who begin showing their work right out of school. However, I would not have had the ideas I have now at that young age. My lived experience, of parenting and care-giving aging parents and in-laws until their last breath, provides me with a stronger perspective and a fearlessness to express my ideas. In September 2022, I sold three of my most expensive pieces made in 2012, in that suburban studio. My persistence and hard work paid off. I will keep working no matter what.”
Dolores S. Slowinski, a long-time resident of Detroit, has a BFA in weaving and ceramics from Wayne State University. Her work experience includes art writing for national, regional, and local print and electronic magazines as well as serving as arts administrator and resource person at the state and local level for over 40 years.
Slowinski returned to studio practice in 1999 and began showing her work in local, state, and regional galleries in 2005. She is among the first 100 World of Threads Festival Artist Interviews posted online at worldofthreadsfestival.com. Most recently her work has been included in three international exhibitions: 23rd International Open, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2020; Shifting Landscapes, Surface Design Association, juried, members exhibition at form & concept gallery in Santa Fe, NM, 2017; and World of Threads Festival 2016 in Oakville/Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Her work has also been published in national and international magazine, books, and zines.
Her art work explores the use of thread as line in the form of hand-stitched drawings on paper. Recently she has begun applying these drawings to re-cycled, industrial grade corrugate to create architectural statements about neighborhoods, urban decay, and gentrification.
During the COVID-19 pandemic she created a body of 80 miniature, stitched, friezes: Marking Time Series, that she sent to numerous friends and colleagues to subvert the tactile contact usually discouraged when viewing art but so necessary in human experience, especially during pandemic lockdowns.
We ARE Here: More Than Just A Number
April 7 - May 26, 2023
To purchase items, please consult with Mallory at hello@cultivategrandrapids.org
Don’t Shoot
Richard Barnett Oil on Panel, 18” x 18”
2022
$1750 Cascades Boisali Biswas Mixed Medium Fibers, 50” x 60”/65”
2019
$350 ea /$2100 all Open Air
WS Cranmore Acrylic, 22” x 22”
2022
$596
44th Street Traffic Jam: September
Elaine Dalcher Oil on Canvas, 36” x 36”
2022
$4200
At the Park
Maureen Heintz
Photographic Print on Metal, 8” x 12”
2019
$195
From the Series: Visible Lines, Untitled (Self-Portrait as Swimmer)
Judith Hopkins
Charcoal on Paper, 79” x 48”
2016
$2,000
Carla Leon Lou Wax Pastel, 26” x 34”
2023
$500
Beaded Teapot Madeline Kaczmarczyk
Clay, Glass Beads, 14” x 11” x 5”
2022
$750
Book of Cranes: Pages 1-2 Estelle Roberge
Giclee of Original Collage, 9” x 15”
2022
$600
Back to the Wall, the Being Slept Dolores Slowinski
Hand-stitched, Waxed, Single strand embroidery floss, 7 colors on paper, 4.5” x 3.25”
2016
$600 Flight Dolores Slowinski
Hand-stitched, waxed, single strand, shaded embroidery floss, 2 colors on paper, 4.5” x 3.25”
2016
$600
Attached Lynn Stephenson Colored Pencil, 23” x 29”
2021
$1300
