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Current articles, as well as selections from our archives.

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Galleries help reframe local arts community

The Orchard Gallery of Fine Art

Published July 8, 2020

For many of the area’s art galleries, the Covid-19 crisis has taken a toll. But it has also provided the already creative among us the opportunity to adapt and reassess ways to share art with a welcoming community while still providing artists them...

Abstract Promises

David Shapiro: Transcendent Abstractions

Fort Wayne Museum of Art keeps Shapiro’s works in the public eye

Long before he became executive director of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Charles Shepard was a young curator in New York City, working among the many...

michele-devinney fort-wayne-museum-of-art

Remembering Chicago artist through her linocut works

Margaret Burroughs

Burroughs known for co-founding a museum

The Margaret Burroughs exhibit at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, which opens this Saturday, Dec. 7, has its origins in an unlikely place. When Mary An...

michele-devinney

Bringing art to the holidays

Holiday Pop-Up Gallery

The Art Farm hosts its annual pop-up gallery

When Lisa Vetter and Paul Siefert met almost 30 years ago, sharing a farm in Spencerville and making art for a living wasn’t exactly the plan. But ...

michele-devinney the-art-farm

Local artist lets abstract work speak for itself

Alexandra Belyaeva

Belyaeva is working through emotion

Artwork titles often define abstraction. You can usually find a melodramatic name like “A Moonlit Blemish” or “Inner Decay” on a little white ...

Getting a late start in art doesn't deter local painter

Jake Patten

Most artists can pinpoint their beginnings somewhere in elementary school. Maybe they were given their first set of paints as a birthday present, or t...

Beatles animator brings art to town

Ron Campbell

In 1964, Australian animator Ron Campbell received a call in the middle of the night from TV producer Al Brodax. Brodax wondered if Campbell wanted to...

steve-penhollow

Larger than life

Jerrod and Kara Tobias

Downtown Fort Wayne and its surrounding areas have latched onto a new trend: large, colorful murals on the facades of buildings usually frequented by ...

Crafting an intricate style all his own

Jeremy Stroup

Like many artists, Jeremy Stroup finds it hard to define himself as one, or even process what exactly that means. With one look at any of his creatio...

Early 20th century printmaker shines in new exhibtion

Dox Thrash

Dox Thrash, an artist whose work is currently on exhibit at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, was talented and innovative, providing work that represented...

michele-devinney

Art exhibit tells stories of triumph

Second Chances Art Exhibit

Art can be therapeutic. It can tell a story. And for Jennifer Crickmore, it can do both. That’s why she eagerly agreed to be part of the Second Chan...

Artlink gets metal with new exhibit

The Art of Metalsmithing Exposed

Art lovers will be able to dive into metalsmithing this month when Artlink features an exhibition about the little-known but centuries-old craft begin...

pat-murphy artlink-contemporary-gallery

Larger-than-life murals add color and light to walkways

Downtown Art

Take a stroll through downtown Fort Wayne and you might see a panda with an ice cream cone on its head, a gigantic bison, or a wild boar. They’re la...

Making an impression at annual exhibition

39th National Print Exhibition

When Maddie Miller talks about the upcoming exhibition at Artlink, she’s speaking not only as the gallery coordinator but also as an artist herself....

Seeking patterns, crafting mantras

Nancy Fritz

Pay attention to the city’s art scene, from colossal alleyway murals to farmer’s market popups, and you’ll notice Fritz Studio making a frequent...

Wood artisans create functional beauty

Indiana Artisan Furniture Guild + 2D Artists

Furniture is typically functional and usually comfortable, but it doesn’t always stand out or make a statement. That is, unless you’re describing...

Marrying words to landscapes

Lindsey Berggren

Local wunderkind Lindsey Berggren churns out more art each week than you probably have hanging in your house. Berggren was interested in art at a you...

whatzup Pick

Imagine owning and living in one of the most interesting houses in Fort Wayne. Now imagine opening up that house five days a week to the public so tha...

chris-hupe castle-gallery-fine-art

Bold, Simple, and Vibrant Art

En Hughey

Colorful yet simple landscapes featuring bold, black lines make up En Hughey’s ink and paper illustrations. “I find inspiration while walking my d...

Guitars as Playable Art

Fort Wayne Museum of Art

While music created by guitars has been providing artistic pleasure to millions for many years and through many musical genres, the beauty and artistr...

michele-devinney fort-wayne-museum-of-art

Featured Artist

When I walked into local oil painter Peter Lupkin’s in-home studio, I was bombarded in the best way by the number of paintings, both minuscule and ...

Putting Herself on the Map

Brenda Drayer

Growing up in Muncie, Brenda Drayer's favorite class was art. But even though she says she was always hanging around the art department throughout hi...

michele-devinney

Spontaneous Inspiration

Michael Collins

Sometimes being in the right place at the right time can lead to destruction. A stray bullet finds its way through your body or your car gets caught ...

Spreading the Words

Matt Plett

Drive south out of downtown on Fairfield, past the neighborhoods that randomly switch from uber-swanky to rundown, and you'll eventually be visually ...

Elizabeth Wamsley

Featured Artist

Sculpture can be an illusive medium. Sure, clay comes to mind, and, of course, that god-awful scene from the movie Ghost, but the great works of scul...

Kathleen Rohrbacher

Featured Artist

Katherine Rohrbacher has been pursuing art her entire life. When she realized she had talent, she dove deep into it in high school. Once she found ou...

Featured Artist

If Nick Ferran took a look in the mirror, he’d see himself: a handsome, bald-with-a-beard, 27-year-old with glasses. But what he’d also see is wh...

Featured Artist

The first glance at Gregg Coffey’s work elicits almost too many thoughts to handle. There are bright colors, geometric lines, abstract shapes, poli...

Master of Lines & Waves

John Hrehov

Art has a way of sweeping us up as children, letting us ride its wave as far as we are willing to go. For some, the wave never becomes more than an...

Putting Art Into Motion

Art Moves

When John Byrne arrived in town last year to assume his duties as artistic director for Fort Wayne Dance Collective, his first appearance came as t...

michele-devinney

A Convergence of Artists

Oil Painters of America

Oil painter John Michael Carter spends a lot of time traveling the world looking for scenes that excite him. It might be street life in Paris, a sunr...

Spreading the Culture

Taste of the Arts

Arts United serves up something special for those wishing to dig into Fort Wayne's cultural delights. In a new two-day format, Taste of the Arts has ...

dodie-miller-gould

Fare Shakespeare to Work

Shakespeare's Island

It's easy to think of a major university parked in your own city as a great option as your kids get older. But the truth is that most colleges and un...

michele-devinney

Graphically Versatile Art

Ruisard

Ian Ruisard is an artist with many gifts and ways to apply them. Labeling himself as a graphic artist, his talents shine through in a cohesive style ...

Featured Artist

Ian Ruisard is an artist with many gifts and ways to apply them. Labeling himself as a graphic artist, his talents shine through in a cohesive style ...

Pop Culture Mash-up Artist

Jason Rowland

Jason Rowland's art is instantly recognizable - not because he doesn't have contemporaries, but because the subjects that he chooses to modify to cre...

JJoshua

Featured Artist

JJoshua looks at the world as a place he hopes to help improve. This improvement through his art and positivity is a main goal of this Canadian-born ...

Featured Artist

Nazar Harran spreads big thoughts across big canvases. His work is bold and shouts for attention. Once compared to Franz Klein, known for explosion...

Featured Artist

With reading glasses perched at the tip of his nose and a brush spiked with just a few, well-manicured hairs in his hand, Sam Hoffman begins another ...

Featured Artist

No paintbrush or chisel will be found in Alec Johnson’s studio. He works with pixels microprocessors and flat screens. During a recent show that br...

Bryan Ballinger

Featured Artist

Bryan Ballinger is a man who looks at the world through a unique lens. The artist is described by gallery director Bridget O’Riley, as an artist wh...

Featured Artist

Look at a painting by Cathy Blyth and you’ll see fields of thick acrylic color stretching across the picture plane overlapped by slashes, smears an...

Christopher Ganz

Featured Artist

Down a flight of wooden stairs, in the basement, hangs a curtain of Visqueen that hides the artist’s workspace. A sheet of drywall mounted to the w...

Featured Artist

Thick bold lines contrast with thin details while swoops and zigzags intersect with each other, creating hundreds of organic and geometric shapes tha...

Featured Artist

The Artlink Gallery is about to be taken by storm. Currently hanging is a retrospective show that is safe to say will bring in hundreds of people bef...

Featured Artist

Nina Bennett is an artist who has the Midas touch. Whatever she is involved in vibrates with the energy of art. Her creative mind expands far beyond ...

Madeline Wilson

Featured Artist

This past June, Roanoke’s Crestwood Gallery hosted an exhibit entitled Permutations, a series of 17 single-print photographs shot with an eye that ...

Featured Artist

Nestled in the heart of Fort Wayne’s beautiful West Central neighborhood is the studio and home of local artist Diane Groenert. Her studio is drenc...

Featured Artist

Mark Phenicie is a collector of all things old. He’s a man who can look at an object, add a flash of creative thought and turn that object into s...

Featured Artist

A series of pits dug into the earth and filled with smashed pots are powerful testaments to the demand for accuracy and quality that the artist, Rich...

Featured Artist

If you’ve taken a stroll through Artlink or Crestwood galleries lately, you might have noticed a few surprising pieces hanging on the walls. Justin...

Featured Artist

The writing on the window leaves no question. There is a new gallery in town. The tiny building that shares a wall with the popular Phoenix restauran...

Featured Artist

As a student schlepping drinks to earn her way through college, Alexandra Hall watched her patrons carefully as they slipped into topsy-turvy convers...

Featured Artist

Enter the office of Cara Lee Wade and you enter the lair of a multifaceted artist with a vibrant personality crowned by an ever-changing head of hair...

Debbie Walterhouse

Featured Artist

Into a building that has served as a doctor, lawyer, and dentist office enters a woman who has been a zookeeper, lifeguard, SCUBA instructor, dolphin...

Featured Artist

Down the sidewalk, up the stairs, down the hall and into the studio, an artist practices his craft in a downtown studio using materials to experiment...

Featured Artist

Long, worn curls of salt-and-pepper hair suggest that Matt Mabis is a free spirit who has collected a rich history of story and adventure. The wrinkl...

Featured Artist

Give a kid a shovel and he will dig – and dig, and dig, and dig. Joseph Pelka, a local ceramicist, connected with the earth (mud specifically) at...

Featured Artist

In early October 2013 two adult whales and one juvenile were carefully loaded onto a moving truck and carried south to the Port Canaveral, Florida. T...

Featured Artist

There was a time when artist Nathan Taves worked in an office surrounded by blueprints, land surveys and aerial photographs. He studied the details o...

Rob Borel

Featured Artist

On October 19, photography enthusiasts worldwide sat in front of computers streaming live feed from the premier international award for black and whi...

Featured Artist

A neatly trimmed building topped with green shingles sits just off the intersection of Columbia and Tecumseh. Inside what used to be a gas station, a...

Phillip Stewart

Featured Artist

Over one year ago, on June 29, 2012, a powerful storm littered city streets with huge branches and fully mature trees as it blasted its way across Fo...

Featured Artist

Many stage actors got their start in theatre to overcome shyness. Others fell into performing because they are natural entertainers. Tracey Buckmaste...

Featured Artist

Jan Hoffman spits out words like “quinophothalone yellow” and “pyrrol crimson” the way most of us talk about what to eat for dinner. You as...

Featured Artist

With family roots burrowing through Indiana soil for over 200 years, Douglas Runyan is an artist whose deep connection to our state’s history is re...

Featured Artist

Thousands of colorful dots wrap the surface of a unique sculpture, entitled “Sun Kissed,” that rises above the heads of staff and students at Hom...

Htoo Doh

Featured Artist

His drawings are grand. His tools are simple. Htoo Doh reveals the strength and subtleties of the human spirit in drawings that are executed with suc...

Featured Artist

There must be something in the water that supplies the 46807 zip code. The area is a spring of artistic talent. Once again I found myself rolling slo...

Jody Hemphill Smith

Featured Artist

Jody Hemphill Smith and her husband, Mark Paul Smith, have roots that run deep under the pavement of West Wayne Street. Hemphill-Smith was raised in ...

Suzanne Galazka

Featured Artist

I met with Suzanne Galazka in her classroom at Artlink Contemporary Art Gallery located inside the Auer Center for Arts and Culture in downtown Fort ...

Featured Artist

Loading five kids into a van and zooming down the road to drop daughters off at ballet class, then turning around to race to the soccer field for ano...

Featured Artist

Tucked up in a $3 padded chair scavenged from a recent GE auction, I leaned close to a tiny space heater, hoping that my chilled red nose would go un...

Featured Artist

Tucked away southwest of Warsaw, just a few miles off of U.S. 30, sits a potter’s sanctuary. Not just any potter’s sanctuary, but one owned, work...

Featured Artist

There are many ways to go about getting your big break. Luck usually plays a huge role. Sometimes it comes down to who you know or striking when the ...

deborah-kennedy

Featured Artist

Fashion; follow it or not, trends in personal attire are a fairly accurate barometer of current culture. “Fashion statements” are indicators of t...

Featured Artist

Though several years it appeared alongside delightfully snappy graphics in the Fort Wayne afternoon daily, the name Sam Minick might be familiar to m...

Featured Artist

Every artist has experienced the following at some point: A well-meaning friend or relative shares with them the work of another artist whose brush o...

Kristy Jo Beber

Featured Artist

Fort Wayne potter Kristy Jo Beber is one of those lucky people who realized early on what they love to do, are terrific at their craft, and have figur...

Rebecca Stockert

Featured Artist

Earlier this month Rebecca Stockert succeeded in placing first runner-up visual artist category in the annual whatzup Readers Poll (Whammy Awards). T...

Featured Artist

The downtown neighborhood of West Central is to Fort Wayne what Greenwich Village is to New York City or what Georgetown is to Washington, DC. Renown...

Featured Artist

In sitting and chatting with Audrey Ushenko one is quickly drawn into a life rich with music, painting, family and friends. Yet as accessible as th...

Featured Artist

Is there anything prettier than colored glass? It is perhaps the one man-made material that rivals the luminescent beauty of flowers. In flower petal...

by-susie-suraci

Michael Harford

Featured Artist

As you read this sentence, very likely somewhere in the world a small, hand-crafted postcard is starting to make its way to the small town of North Ma...

Featured Artist

It's not easy at times to find the multi-dexterous Susie Suraci. She's not a recluse, just a busy girl. During the work-a-day week she's in the adm...

Featured Artist

Diners, don't be alarmed. If you look up from your plate of pasta to find a blank wall staring back at you, it may not be the restaurant's fault. P...

Featured Artist

Collared once with the label "man of the cloth" for his intricate fabric collages, fifty-few-year-old local galleryist Joel Fremion remains tod...

Featured Artist

Consider this description of a 12-year-old work as a not so simple, but revealing portrait of local philosopher/artist Jeff Strayer: The piece, e...

Featured Artist

This is a story about David Seculoff, who, disguised as a mild-mannered, part-time doorman during the day, becomes a mild-mannered clarinetist ...

Featured Artist

Chatting with Beth Albright at her dining table on Fort Wayne’s south side, it is hard to keep focused on the artist, attractive and vibrant though...

by-susan-suraci

Featured Artist

Style trumps pretty much everything except aesthetics according to artist Tim Johnson. It's an adage clearly manifested in the 33 pieces that compr...

Featured Artist

Julia Meek, the widely respected Fort Wayne visual artist and radio personality, has become so associated with all things folk, eco-sound, pantheistic...

Christopher Ganz

Featured Artist

For most of us that culminating last snapshot in the bathroom mirror, cursorily taken in preparation to face the world, grants immediate answers. ...

Featured Artist

One of three award winners from the Fifth Regional Exhibition in January, Sayaka Ganz, the young metal sculptor, brings a wispy breath of fresh...

Featured Artist

It's been four years and four months ago since internationally known sculptor and former Fort Wayne resident Dale Enochs soloed at his friend Davi...

Charlie Cummings

Featured Artist

Attired in a pair of baggy khaki shorts, a burnt orange t-shirt and cross trainers, 32-year-old clay artist Charlie Cummings recently sat calm, c...

Suzanne Galazka

Featured Artist

Go Figure. Drawing, a fundamental, if not the most elemental skill in an artist's tool kit is losing status in some academic quarters. Not so f...

Featured Artist

Local artist Gary Travis wears several hats. Soon he'll be turning them. The 53-year-old has spent the past 15 years at IPFW as the university...

Featured Artist

One of a recognizable, yet small, cache of local plein air or, outdoor, painters living and working in Fort Wayne, Karen Moriarty stands out as...

Featured Artist

In many ways the 56-year-old local artist Bill Snyder provides the dictionary definition of He hasn't had a public showing of his works for...

Featured Artist

Karen Thompson, the revered educator and much-admired photographer, may have finally found her la querencia, that place staked out in the arena b...

Featured Artist

Doing something halfway or part-time typically produces a result that is itself but half-baked. But for the well-regarded local painter Tom Kee...

Featured Artist

For 45-year-old Fort Wayne native David Krouse - the painter, sculptor, set designer, gallery owner, teacher, father, husband, house painter an...

Don Kruse

Featured Artist

Confronting a Don Kruse work for the first time may make you feel the need to dial up Mapquest, find the Rosetta Stone or search for a user’s manua...

Featured Artist

Wearing jeans, a neatly ironed striped, button down-collared shirt and soft suede leather boots, retired IPFW art department associate professor...

Featured Artist

Columbia City artist Tom Hubbard is one of those people who look exactly like who they are — like the female dancer whose ponytail, leotard top, je...

Featured Artist

The unassuming (except for the pony-tail and ear stud), reasoned and articulate Renaissance man Matthew Jones, now in his early 40's, has spent ne...

Sal Soto

Featured Artist

At 28 Sal Soto has already been around the block a couple of times. Raised on South Lafayette Street (his parents still live there), the younger...

George McCullough

Featured Artist

A pilgrim with perhaps tens of thousands of miles under his belt artist George McCullough doesn't give you the feeling that he's been in pursuit of t...

Art Cislo

Featured Artist

Pretensions are out the window when you meet Art Cislo in his studio at his quaint South Side home. Clad in suspender-hung khakis and his traditional...

Featured Artist

At 50, Terry Haffner is a mature man who dominates a room. He's a fast talker, articulate, assured, one of six siblings that include a lawyer an...

Featured Artist

A cross between the classic curmudgeon and Yoda, the much respected Russell Oettel - fine arts Professor Emeritus at IPFW, former head of the Fort ...

Featured Artist

When she arrives she appears in a color-coordinated outfit: red and black cardigan sweater over a black blouse with tailored black slacks and ox-blo...

Featured Artist

You gotta ask yourself: Is there an inherent problem with the whatzup polling procedures regarding the Whammy awards for best visual artist? With ...

Featured Artist

Consider the basket. For thousands of years, people have used them to carry, haul and store countless items, from life-giving grain to romance-induci...

Featured Artist

It's been a few years since painter Crystal George last roamed the dusty paths and narrow lanes that frame the public market of Cochabamba in Boliv...

Featured Artist

According to industry figures from a couple of years ago, there were nearly 200 million cameras in the U.S. accounting for something like 17 billion...

Michael Poorman

Featured Artist

To distill the essence of local painter Michael Poorman's recent work is to retrace the artist's own 40-plus-year journey of collecting, discardin...

Featured Artist

It took just a brief moment for artist Terry Ratliff to scout up a couple chairs and place them pretty much in the center of his solo exhibition the ...

Featured Artist

It may have only been a wild fantasy back then. It may not have even been anything that conscious. But Joseph Andersen's journey to this point starte...

African-American History Museum

Featured Artist

Perry Mason wouldn't stand for it. Neither would Johnny Cochran, but his objection would be more stylish. "If it's hearsay, it cannot sway," he'd tel...

Featured Artist

I figure at least on some days illustrator/musician Chris Pyle awakens to a universe populated by edgy, cartoonish musicians and singers. They appe...

Colored Sands Glass Co.

Featured Artist

I'm no daredevil, particularly when it comes to art. I'm comfortable with a paintbrush or a pencil, but I generally stay away from media that are cap...

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This Friday, September 25th, 8-11pm

Current Issue

Current Issue

Embassy Theatre

Sep 24-30, 2020

Vol. 25 No. 8

© 2020 Whatzup, LLC. • Icons made by Whatzup & Google.

© 2020 Whatzup, LLC. • Icons made by Whatzup & Google.