Upcoming Events and Exhibitions

Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective
Nov
9
to Mar 1
Exhibit, Gallery Event

Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective

PenArt presents a career-spanning retrospective of artist, educator, and community champion Nancy Sargent. The exhibition follows a thematic journey from her earliest paintings studying at Cardinal Stritch University to works made during her careers in education and advertising to pieces made in her Fish Creek studio as recently as this year.

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Family Art Day
Dec
14
Family Art Day

Family Art Day

Memory Sculptures inspired by Elyse-Krista Mische

Moments of Time! 

Join us for a creative family experience where you’ll build simple sculptures that explore big ideas: What makes a moment special? How do we want to be remembered?

Inspired by Elyse Krista Mische, a recent artist in residence at Peninsula School of Art, Moments of Time invites you to use art as a way to share stories, think about who we are, and connect to our past, present, and future. Using everyday objects and natural materials, each family member will create a sculpture that reflects the things they love and cherish.

This project helps us pause, explore memories, and celebrate what makes life unique—together. Let’s make memories and art that will last a lifetime!

We provide the art materials and the inspiration, so you can share the fun and accomplishment of creating fine art projects together. Drop in any time, 9am - noon. FREE for families with children ages 3 to 12.

Led by Katherine Baeten

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Cabin Fever: Collage and Company
Feb
6
Event

Cabin Fever: Collage and Company

Beat the winter blues! Grab a group of friends or coworkers and come to PenArt for a lively evening of creativity, music, and fun. Enjoy cozy refreshments (with and without spirits) while you create a collage from photographic material, patterned papers, and more. All materials are provided.

Ages 21+. Live music by Paul Taylor. 10$ Suggested Donation.

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Family Art Day
Nov
16
Family Art Day

Family Art Day

Everyday Object to Quirky Character inspired by Thomas McIntyre.

Explore the absurd and the functional in Artist-in-Residence Thomas McIntyre’s work! Using the everyday object of a lamp as inspiration, create a colorful sculpture out of modeling clay, a wooden base, and battery-operated bulb. Add texture, details, and other embellishments to create a light-up character entirely your own. 

We provide the art materials and the inspiration, so you can share the fun and accomplishment of creating fine art projects together. Drop in any time, 9am - noon. FREE for families with children ages 3 to 12.

Led by Joslyn Villalpando

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Opening Reception: Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective
Nov
9
Event, Gallery Event, Opening Reception

Opening Reception: Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective

Join us for an opening reception of Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective in the Guenzel Gallery.

PenArt presents a career-spanning retrospective of artist, educator, and community champion Nancy Sargent. The exhibition follows a thematic journey from her earliest paintings studying at Cardinal Stritch University to works made during her careers in education and advertising to pieces made in her Fish Creek studio as recently as this year.

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Of Place
Aug
24
to Oct 26
Exhibit

Of Place

Images by Kasey and Ben Photography

This summer Peninsula School of Art and Peninsula State Park partnered to offer a residency experience that puts both art making and the environment at its center. Inaugural artists Maysey Craddock and Tomiko Jones were invited to explore the state park through the lens of their individual research; discovering new connections in their practices, creating site-responsive works, and gaining a deeper understanding of this particular place and its environmental circumstances. The residency experience culminates in the exhibition Of Place, curated by Shan Bryan-Hanson, featuring work created by Maysey Craddock and Tomiko Jones prior to and during their residency sessions.

 Curator’s Statement

Of Place is the culmination of the inaugural Peninsula State Park Artist-in-Residence program, co-sponsored by the Peninsula School of Art and Friends of Peninsula State Park. During the residency, Massey Craddock and Tomiko Jones each created several new works of art, exhibited here in context with pieces from their larger bodies of work.

Maysey Craddock’s paintings on stitched paper bags depict images that draw our attention to the nuanced shapes of tree branches, plant forms, and other intimate details unique to a specific place. She pulls us into the work not by painting distant trees in vast landscapes, but rather by bringing the foliage into the foreground, allowing its presence to fill the picture plane. Her mesmerizing use of color and contrast creates immersive painted worlds: microecosystems that reference the Anthropocene, disappearing wetlands, elegy and entropy.

Craddock’s process involves layers of mediation, from disassembling and reassembling the found paper bags on which she paints to using technology to alter photographic images that are then drawn and painted on the sewn together paper bags. In many ways, the organic and evolving nature of this process reflects the changing landscapes she depicts, the way land is altered by human activity and encroachment.

Tomiko Jones uses the cyanotype process as a means of memorial, to bring attention not only to absence but also to presence, not so much to what remains as to what is. So much of Jones’ work explores loss, both individual and cultural. It’s hard to look at her work and not consider the impact of human carelessness and cruelty. Through the cyanotype process which she has referred to as “a collaboration with sun, wind, and water” she tenderly memorializes animals forgotten or left behind.

Immersed in ritual, her art presents an unhurried way of being in a “grand place,” an antidote to the typical checklist of sites to see. She enters the public lands she visits with an openness that allows her art to unfold over time. She begins with questions rather than answers, and the results are intimate and thought-provoking. The deep care with which she approaches her subjects is palpable, focusing attention on that which is ephemeral and temporal.

Craddock and Jones create art that brings awareness to climate change and related humanitarian crises of our time, and yet they don’t prescribe solutions or posit answers. Rather, they guide us gently to see, to open our eyes, and carefully consider what is before us.

Shan Bryan-Hanson, Curator

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Lantern + Moon
Aug
19
Event

Lantern + Moon

  • Weborg Point Fishing Pier in Peninsula State Park (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Based on the Japanese tradition of toro nagashi, Lantern + Moon remembers and honors those who have passed. The event in Peninsula State Park includes a projection on a scrim on the shore of one of Tomiko’s works + lanterns made by Tomiko. Visitors are welcome to arrive earlier and decorate a lantern to add to the collection in remembrance. Lanterns will be released shortly after sunset. This event is free and open to the public.

Image: Donny Kimball

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Cyanotype Drop-In Workshop
Aug
10
Event

Cyanotype Drop-In Workshop

Join resident artist Tomiko Jones and Naturalist Liz Schmutzer to make cyanotype prints using natural materials, including leaves, flowers, rocks, and items from the Nature Center such as skulls, feathers, pelts, fossils, and more.

This event is free and open to the public. All skill levels and ages welcome.

Artwork: Tomko Jones, The Fox

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Family Art Day: Story Books Inspired by Zeja Copes
May
18
Family Art Day

Family Art Day: Story Books Inspired by Zeja Copes

Former PenArt Artist-in-Residence Zeja Z. Copes is a painter and fiction writer interested in bookmaking, traditional illustration, and the many ways to tell a scary story. Take a page out of her book and make a mini graphic novel to tell a story—scary or otherwise.

We provide the art materials and the inspiration, so you can share the fun and accomplishment of creating fine art projects together. Drop in any time, 9am - noon. FREE for families with children ages 3 to 17.

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