For several years, the Glen Arbor Art Center has offered lectures on a variety of subjects in its gallery. Then came the pandemic, forcing the organization to find a way to adapt. “The COVID restrictions were a roadblock,” says Gallery Manager Sarah Bearup-Neal. “How could we continue to offer them?”

Enter technology. The organization recorded two lectures which it is now offering online: “The Power of Art in 28½ Minutes” and “Creative Resistance – Political Art & Craftism.” In the first, studio artist Hank Feeley examines how and why humans invented art as a language to communicate beyond the spoken word, using the work of Picasso, Upton Sinclair, Mies Van Der Rohe, and Steve Jobs. Feeley, a Glen Arbor resident, is an author, painter, and sculptor whose second book, Painting the Joy of Sleeping Bear County, was published in 2016.

Politics – past and present – provide ample fodder for creative inspiration. Bearup-Neal cites examples from Theodore Gericault’s 19th century painting, Raft of the Medusa, to the thousands of pink, hand-knit caps worn during the historic 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC, to show how the visual arts are used as expressive tools. It is offered in conjunction with the GAAC’s exhibition “Power Tools.”

Tickets for the program are $10 for GAAC members, $15 for nonmembers. Registered viewers will be given an access code that will allow them to watch anytime from Sept. 20–Nov. 7. While Bearup-Neal bemoans the inability to meet face-to-face, she admits there are advantages to this methodology. “The arts – music, theatre, visual arts – are a direct experience business. COVID threw a spanner into that. The advantage is this you can do anytime. We’re delighted to have a way to do this.”

Image: “Guernica,” Pablo Picasso, oil, 1937