Artist Talk: Midsummer- Featuring Dawn Smith
Saturday August 1st, Doors at 1:30- talk will begin at 2pm
Please join us for an artist talk with Dawn Smith to mark the closing of the exhibit , "Midsummer,”
Midsummer
Midsummer is a season of extremes. Days stretch long into twilight, growth reaches its peak, and the world appears saturated with light. Across cultures and throughout time, this moment has inspired celebration, ritual, and reflection.
Intense brilliance often reveals what might otherwise remain unseen as brightest sun casts the deepest shadow. Summer welcomes abundance: flowers bloom, fruits ripen, and life flourishes. At the same time, we inhabit a world where forests burn and oceans grow warmer each year.
The dissonance between beauty and catastrophe is palpable. Still, we continue to dream, create, and make meaning from contradiction.
Art can be a gesture of hope, a form of witness, an act of critique, or a way of processing what is difficult to name. In the space between radiance and shadow, beauty and unease this exhibition invites reflection on what emerges when opposites coexist.
Dawn Smith is a Metro Detroit-based interdisciplinary artist whose creative practice includes painting, tattooing, sculpture, performance, and music. With over 20 years of experience as a tattoo artist and more than a decade immersed in oil painting, her work reflects a fusion of technical skill and imaginative storytelling. Raised in the Detroit area by a blue-collar tradesman and an Italian immigrant father, her early memories of watching her father practice pinstriping and lettering sparked her lifelong fascination with artistic craftsmanship.
Smith uses metaphor and symbolism to examine complex themes such as female agency, social hierarchies, environmental fragility, consumerism and social stratification. Her work has been recognized with awards and features in publications such as Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, where her bold and imaginative vision has garnered recognition in the Neo-surrealist genre.
Following the discussion, the artist will be available for questions
Schedule
1:30pm Doors Open
2:00pm Artist Talk Begins
Artist Talk: Transient Narratives
Featuring the work of:
Melissa A. Day and Ryan Herberholz
Please join us for an artist talk with Melissa A. Day and Ryan Herberholz to celebrate their current exhibit , "Transient Narratives,”
TRANSIENT NARRATIVES
Transience describes both the activity of human beings and physical processes. On long enough timescales a building, a city, a single life, or the existence of a species on a planet in a solar system could be considered features of a transient universe. These works attempt to narrate the ineffable. While two differing approaches to landscape are evident in this exhibition they both explore the ways in which human beings interact with their environment and each other. These paintings contain evidence of activity and remnants of communication that divulge the fact that the only constant we can count on is change.
Melissa’s work reflects her fascination with urban landscapes. She finds beauty in the images and textures, on buildings and objects that over time have been altered through the effects of humans and nature. The meaning of these works are irreducible to a single thought or idea. They are as abstract as they are significant. Her collaged works explore unstructured narratives within urban landscapes, blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces. The layering of collage, drawing pencil, acrylic, and oil paint are used to express the transitory nature of the urban environments.
Ryan’s landscapes are concerned with the permanence and reality of the natural world and phenomena beyond our human ability to sense. He examines humanity’s relationship to the natural world- in terms of recreation, subsistence, stewardship, and extraction. His vibrant and idyllic vistas often portend of potential calamity- just out of view. Although his works are often based upon the varied landscape of Michigan they attempt to probe forking paths through space and time. He fixes his attention upon the cusp of where human built edifice crumbles into the uncanny. In this realm speculative imaginings become as real as toes wriggling in grass that is much too green.
Following the panel discussion, the artists will be available for questions
Schedule
6pm Doors Open
6:30 pm Artist Talk Begins
When The Wolf Comes Home - Closing Reception
Saturday, January 24, 2026
Please join us for the Closing Reception of Anna van Schaap's, "When the Wolf Comes Home' on Saturday January 24th, 2-5pm. The closing reception will include a brief artist talk by van Schaap on her work and the show, including select readings from her newly published book of works and writings. Following the artist talk will be a panel discussion, looking at the way women's bodies have been used throughout art history, how contemporary femme artists are reclaiming their bodies and stories, and also how we move forward in the new age of technology and its weaponization against women.
The panel will include past Gallery at Ideation Orange Artist, Marie Awn, current artist Anna van Schaap, and University of Michigan Women and Gender Studies Lecturer Dr. Tiffany Ball.
The discussion will focus on issues women face today and how creativity is helping reshape the narrative on women's rights, women's representation, and women's lives.
Following the panel discussion, the artists will be available for questions and gallery tours to end the exhibition.
Schedule
2pm - Gallery open
2:30pm - Artist Talk
3:15pm - Panel Discussions
4-5pm - Gallery Tour with Artists
Bread of Angels, Songs and Stories with Patti Smith
Friday, January 9th, 2026
Join us for an evening celebrating the release of Patti Smith’s new memoir, Bread of Angels. The event features a live performance and an intimate discussion with Smith —joined by her son, Jackson Smith—about the creation of her latest work, which spans her life from childhood to the present day.
On November 4, 2025, fifteen years after publication of the National Book Award Winning Classic Just Kids and capping off the 50th Anniversary Tour of Horses, Patti Smith's iconic first album, Random House published Patti Smith's long-awaited memoir, Bread of Angels.
"November 4th is especially meaningful to me," says Smith. "It's the birthday of Robert Mapplethorpe and the anniversary of my late husband Fred "Sonic" Smith's passing. It took a decade to write this book, grappling with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime. I'm hoping that people will find something they need."
Patti’s Bio
Patti Smith is also the author of A Book of Days, Woolgathering, M Train, Year of the Monkey, and Collected Lyrics. Her seminal album Horses, which was released fifty years ago, has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time. Her global exhibitions include Strange Messenger, Land 250, Camera Solo, and Evidence. In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the title of Commander des Arts et des Lettres. Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Smith is also the recipient of the ASCAP Founders Award, Sweden's Polar Music Prize, the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award, and the Legion d'honneur.
Schedule:
7 pm - Doors
8 - 9pm - Event starts - Patti Performs, with Jackson Smith on accompaniment
9 - 10pm - Reception
10:30pm - Doors close