Hello! I am looking for interesting cultural locations, artist galleries, events, etc. in Toronto and surrounding area. This is to guide me on a roadtrip to document arts and culture in the Great Lakes, for a project I am calling GreatLakes.Art. Feel free to follow along on IG, or let me know if you will be around! Thanks!
Hello! I am looking for interesting cultural locations, artist galleries, events, etc. in Toronto and surrounding area. This is to guide me on a roadtrip to document arts and culture in the Great Lakes, for a project I am calling GreatLakes.Art. Feel free to follow along on IG, or let me know if you will be around! Thanks!
This is not a drill! I’m going on a roadtrip. It starts, well, now. Just got back from Costco with a fresh set-o-tires and a full tank-o-gas.
If you had 7-10 days to learn, by doing, about the arts and culture in any of these regions, where would you go and why?
where do I have to stop along the way? Best food? Unique art? Public sculptures? Giant roadside animals? Best campsites?
What’s the best or most unique place to be for the 4th of July?
Anyone want to have their work or town documented or do a quick interview about your area or work?
Depending on the direction I select (maybe even a loop!), I’d love to stop in and learn about the work you all do!
Cheers!
Name: Shaina Levee
Location: Marquette, Michigan
Discipline: Music, songwriting, poetry
Medium: Voice, harp, original songs, devotional music
Website: Northwoods Ayurveda
Instagram: u/northwoodsayurveda
Other Links: YouTube Performance Recording
Shaina Levee is a singer, harpist, songwriter, and poet based in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She creates original and devotional music informed by folk traditions, contemplative practice, and her relationship with the Great Lakes region. According to materials provided through her Attention Grant application, her work draws from Irish and Celtic influences while remaining rooted in contemporary songwriting.
Levee stated that many of her songs and poems originate from personal experiences of “heightened states of consciousness” and are often developed during time spent in landscapes, silence, solitude, and connection with loved ones. She described her music as engaging with relationships to land, water, ancestry, lineage, community, and what she refers to as “the unseen dimensions of human experience.”
She indicated that she has recently begun sharing her original and devotional compositions more publicly through performances, collaborations, and recording projects. Additional visibility, she noted, would help connect her work with listeners, presenters, and artistic communities while supporting the continued development of her creative practice.
Upcoming activities provided by the artist include performances in Marquette and appearances at Hiawatha Music Festival and Divine Pine Gathering. She is also preparing an album release planned for early 2027.
Interview
What kind of work are you creating?
I am a singer, harpist, and songwriter creating original and devotional music shaped by folk traditions, contemplative practice, and life in the Great Lakes region. My work explores relationship to the waters and lands we inhabit, to ancestry and lineage, to community, and to the unseen dimensions of human experience. Drawing from Irish and Celtic influences while remaining rooted in contemporary songwriting, I create music that reflects a sense of reverence for place and the ways rivers, lakes, and landscapes can shape our inner lives. Through song, I seek to foster connection, belonging, and a deeper awareness of the relationships that sustain us across generations and within the living world.
Why would additional attention be meaningful right now?
Additional attention would be meaningful because I am at a pivotal stage in the development of my artistic work. For many years, music has been an important part of my life, but only recently have I begun bringing my original and devotional compositions forward in a more public way through performances, collaborations, and recording projects. Increased visibility would help connect this work with listeners, presenters, and artistic communities who resonate with themes of belonging, ancestry, place, and connection. As an independent artist working in a rural region, opportunities for broader exposure can have a significant impact, helping meaningful work find its audience while supporting the continued growth of my creative practice.
What kind of support would be most valuable?
As an independent artist creating original music, I am interested in reaching listeners who are genuinely drawn to folk traditions, place-based artistry, and contemplative forms of music. Opportunities to share the story behind my work through interviews, features, or artist profiles would help people connect more deeply with the music itself.
I would also value introductions to presenters, festivals, listening rooms, and artistic communities throughout the Great Lakes region. As I continue developing original material and recording projects, these kinds of connections can help build sustainable relationships with audiences and fellow artists while expanding the reach of the work beyond my local community.
What informs your songwriting and poetry?
My art is born through personal experiences of heightened states of consciousness. In that way, most of my songs and poems carry the vibration of an inner landscape at peace, in revelation, contemplation, devotion, or even break through. I often arrive in these moments while journeying through beautiful landscapes, in times of silence and solitude, and through connection with loved ones. In a way, they are like the Aha! to the moment itself…a seed of wisdom planted within the soil of soul.
What are you currently working toward?
I’m particularly excited about an album release intended for early 2027 during winter’s deep chamber. The gathering will bring together song, meditation, dance and poetry. I hope to support the dissolution (at times) of the boundary between audience and performer throughout the event. In that way, the concert will serve as experiential art where all are invited to drop into their hearts and share in collective spirit.
I posted some controversial comments about AI on instagram, in order to inspire conversation about technology in the arts. It clearly ruffled some feathers, but also brought out some very interesting perspectives.
What do you think? Did I go too far? Is this "rage bait"? Is this a worthwhile conversation? Is it ethical to use shocking or attention-grabbing comments to create engagement and conversation?
Read all of the comments at https://www.instagram.com/p/DaI71SCHXCW/?img_index=1
Our latest Attention Grant recipient is Chicago artist Vidushi Lohia (@vidushilohia_art)
Using fabric, thread, and hand-dyed textiles, Vidushi creates material-based works rooted in memory, inheritance, and the layered histories carried through domestic objects and cultural traditions.
One thought from our interview that stayed with us:
“I often return to older pieces, revisiting and reworking them as my own experiences shift. Instead of thinking about a work as finished, I see it as something that can continue to evolve, absorbing new meanings over time.”
Currently balancing an active studio practice alongside full-time museum work, Vidushi continues developing projects centered on fabric as archive — examining how memory, labor, and identity can be held physically within material itself.
📍 Chicago, Illinois
🧵 Fiber Art | Installation | Textile-Based Practice
🪷 Focused on memory, inheritance, and material histories
Read the full feature at GreatLakes.art
#AttentionGrant #ChicagoArtist #FiberArtist #TextileInstallation #ContemporaryArt #ArtistInterview #GreatLakesArt
Our latest Attention Grant recipient is Minneapolis artist Elizabeth Neilson (@elizabeth.neilson.studio)
Elizabeth is a mixed-media artist whose work combines photography, collage, textile work, costume fabrication, practical effects, and assemblage to examine the relationship between belief systems, philosophy, and visual culture.
Her current body of work imagines Russian Cosmism as a religion, drawing on visual traditions found in Russian Orthodox iconography while experimenting with highly physical, hands-on production methods.
One thing that stood out in our conversation was how much care goes into her process:
“People have assumed that I’ve used AI or post-production to add effects to the photographs… but that’s not the case. I am against the use of AI in art. The light in Nikoleta’s dress… is the result of weaving fiber optics through fabric for 8+ hours and hooking up a light source inside the clothing.”
Elizabeth is currently building toward her first solo exhibition while continuing to develop new work rooted in photography, practical effects, historical visual language, and mixed-media experimentation.
📍 Minneapolis, Minnesota
🎨 Mixed Media | Photography | Assemblage
🕯 Current work inspired by Russian Orthodox iconography & Cosmism
Read the full feature at GreatLakes.art
#AttentionGrant #GreatLakesArt #MinnesotaArtist #MixedMediaArt #ContemporaryArt #PhotographyArt
The lake sturgeon population currently sits at roughly 1% of its historic abundance. Overfishing caused populations to collapse by 1900.
Name: Samuel Karow
Location: Madison, Wisconsin
Discipline: Video Art, Filmmaking
Medium: Film, Photography, Multimedia Installation
Organization (if applicable): No organization listed
Website: Fancy Horse Films
Instagram: u/fancyhorsefilms
Other Links:
Introduction
Samuel Karow is a Midwest-based video artist and filmmaker working between documentary and experimental forms. His practice uses film, photography, and multimedia installation, with recent work increasingly centered on installation-based formats incorporating aging analog technologies and their material qualities.
Karow’s work incorporates personal narrative, obsolete analog technologies, and hybrid documentary approaches. According to materials provided through his application, his recent projects examine memory, perception, and the relationship between recorded media and lived experience, often working with cameras, CRT televisions, feedback systems, and sculptural installation elements.
In 2026, Karow was included in the Museum of Wisconsin Art Wisconsin Artists Biennial, where he received the Second Place Award. He was also named Artist in Residence at the Trout Museum of Art and is currently presenting a solo exhibition titled The Feedback Body at Gallery 1308. Additional visibility, according to Karow, would help support connections with curators, arts organizations, collaborators, and audiences throughout the Great Lakes region.
Interview
What’s something you’ve been noticing lately that’s influencing your work?
“Lately I’ve been noticing how often images don’t behave the way we expect them to. I spend a lot of time working with older analog cameras and displays, and they’re constantly introducing noise, distortion, and other surprises. For a long time I thought of those things as technical flaws, but now I’m much more interested in what they reveal.
I think part of that comes from getting older and realizing how unreliable memory can be. The older I get, the less my memories feel like fixed records and the more they feel like fragments that shift every time I revisit them. When an image breaks down or drifts, it often feels closer to that experience than a perfectly clean recording does.”
Is there a piece, project, or idea you keep returning to lately?
“I keep coming back to the idea of building installations that function like strange memory devices. A lot of my recent work involves older cameras, CRT televisions, feedback loops, and sculptural objects that feel somewhere between machines and artifacts.
What interests me is the possibility that memory isn’t something we simply store and retrieve, but something we actively reconstruct. When I build an installation, I’m often thinking less about presenting an image and more about creating a space where fragments of memory, imagination, and personal history can overlap.
I don’t think I’m trying to recreate memories so much as recreate the feeling of trying to hold onto something that’s already changing.”
Has living in or around the Great Lakes region shaped your work in any way?
“Yeah, definitely, although it’s hard to point to one specific thing.
I grew up in rural Wisconsin, and a lot of my relationship to time, landscape, and memory comes from that experience. There’s a certain rhythm here that I’ve always connected with. You become very aware of seasons, cycles, and change happening gradually over long periods of time.
I think that perspective has stayed with me. Many of the places that shaped me as a kid have changed, disappeared, or taken on a different meaning. A lot of my work is rooted in that feeling—trying to understand how places, objects, and memories continue to exist even as they slowly transform.”
Materials & Process
Current Work & Projects
Additional Notes
Don't hold back. What is one sentence artists are tired of hearing?
I’ve been thinking a lot about how much everyday culture quietly disappears from the internet.
Not major historical events.
Small things.
The hand-painted sign outside a local store.
A fading historical marker.
A bulletin board in a coffee shop.
A trail sign in a public park.
A museum label explaining an object.
A weird handwritten note taped to a door.
These things tell us a lot about a place.
They show what communities choose to preserve, explain, regulate, advertise, celebrate, or remember.
I’ve been slowly building a project called Cultural Strata around this idea:
What if we intentionally documented the small cultural artifacts around us before they disappear?
So I wanted to try a simple experiment here.
Take one photo of a sign near you.
Could be anything:
Then post it here, or send it to me.
I’m curious what patterns would emerge if people all over the world contributed small fragments of public culture like this.
Feels like there might be something important here.
Would love to see what you find.
You know them and love them in their work in Backrooms, Shrinking, Wayne and Sing Street- meet u/lukita and @_mark_mckenna_ as Cody and Kevin in An Autumn Summer.
Pre-save on Apple TV now, or get An Autumn Summer on Prime and Fandango on June 9
Has anyone experimented with making grant or application queues public?
I'm a digital strategist working on a regional arts and culture project, and we're testing something that I haven't seen very often.
Most programs follow a familiar pattern:
We're experimenting with a public queue instead.
Every applicant is immediately added to a public directory and queue page. That means they receive visibility, discoverability, and inclusion in a growing archive before any editorial feature or additional support occurs.
The hypothesis is that visibility itself may have value.
In other words, can documentation, discoverability, and connection create benefits even before a project is selected for additional support?
We're only a few weeks in, but we've already received applications from artists and organizations across multiple states.
I'm curious whether anyone here has experimented with similar approaches, either in arts/culture or other nonprofit sectors.
What worked? What didn't?
Am I missing any obvious downsides?