Downtown Artist Series @ Tuscan Café & City Hall

The Northville Art House partners with community organizations and businesses to promote the appreciation of the arts, arts education, and local artists. The Downtown Artist Series has a rotating presentation of work by established and emerging artists inside the Tuscan Café, 141 E Main St. and at Northville City Hall, 215 E Main St. Featured work is available for purchase online and by phone.

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TUSCAN CAFÉ

October 16 – January 7: LINDA KLENCZAR – SALINE, MI

Linda Klenczar is a retired professional interior designer. Her studies of pastels began over 25 years ago with countless nationally acclaimed pastelists. She is a Signature Member of the Great Lakes Pastel Society as well as a member of the Chelsea Painters, Ann Arbor Area Pastelists, Artists Guild at Crooked Tree Arts Center, Petoskey, the Guild of Artists and Artisans/Gutman Gallery Ann Arbor, and Three Pines Studios.

Awards include those from the Huron River Art Collective, The Great Lakes Pastel Society, The Crooked Tree Arts Center, Petoskey, and the Great Lakes Plein Air Painters. She won the Grand Prize in the Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival in 2018 and Honorable Mention in the Pastel Journal Magazine Top 100, in 2022. Linda has had pastels accepted in the juried exhibitions of the IAPS (International Association of Pastel Societies in 2024 and 2022.

“My art is a very personal statement about where I have visited, how it affected me, and that I enjoyed the experience of being in that location. Whether the architecture has inspired me, or the landscape or water scene is of interest, I like to record it. My pastels are my personal diary of life as it happens, and I wish to share it with others. It is my storytelling. If what I have painted sparks the memory of others for that place or a place that was similar and you wish to make it part of your collection of memories, I thank you.” – Linda Klenczar 

August 21 – October 29: Lori Zurvalec, Grosse Pointe, MI

Lori  Zurvalec has studied at the Kanuga Water Media Workshops in North Carolina and participated in classes or workshops at Signal Return, the Center for Creative Studies, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, the Grosse Pointe War Memorial, and Eastern Michigan University. She has exhibited artwork in over 325 juried exhibitions and has won over 124 awards to date. Her paintings can be found in the collections of Henry Ford Medical Center – Royal Oak, the American Board of Emergency Medicine, University of Michigan-Dearborn Stamelos/Alfred Berkowitz Gallery, St. Joseph Mercy of Macomb Hospital, the Grosse Pointe Public Library, as well as in numerous private collections.

Lori is an International Society of Experimental Artists Nautilus Fellowship/Signature Member and a Michigan Water Color Society Great Lakes Fellow/Signature Member. She has served the Michigan Water Color Society as President, Exhibition Chair, and Graphics Chair, and the Detroit Society of Women Painters & Sculptors as President and Recording Secretary.

“My art work reflects my view of a sometimes incomprehensible, challenging world. The subject matter of my work almost always refers to the natural world, foliage or trees that I have sketched.  If I am not painting directly from life, I have my sketchbooks spread out before me and I refer to the drawings as I work. My compositions are deliberate, generally worked out in my sketchbooks, revolving around a specific concept or idea.

In Ways of Studying Nature, the painter Paul Klee spoke of the dialogue with nature that is an essential element or condition for the artist. For me, that  dialogue is vital: it informs all my creative endeavors. Consequently, even my most abstract pieces have a strong relation to nature. All the art I create is influenced by the strong spiritual connection I feel to the natural world, to the positives and negatives found in nature. I tend to use many organic shapes in my compositions. I also want my work to make a connection, tell a story, but also to evoke in viewers a response related to their own story.

At the beginning of a new painting, my brushstrokes and mark making are directly influenced by music, most often Bach, but recently, Mozart and Beethoven as well. My work is very mark-driven; individual strokes that attest to the presence of the artist’s hand are important to me. My work is gestural, with a quality of neo-expressionism.

I work in whatever media effectively communicates the particular story of that piece of art: watercolor, acrylic, printmaking, assemblage, collage and oil.” – Lori Zuravec @LoriZurvalec

 

NORTHVILLE CITY HALL

October 16 – February 23: Ivy Riley, Detroit, MI

“Greetings art family, my name is Ivy Riley. I am what some would call a polymath in the art world. My artistry includes not only painting but sculpting, tufting, jewelry, fashion design, wood carving, and much more. My goal is to inspire the youth to be great. I was born and raised in Michigan but my grandmothers says that she thinks I’m from Mars. The crazy thing is I’m starting to believe her.” – Ivy Riley

2025  Tuscan Schedule: (Subject to change)

LEFT – RIGHT – MAIN & ALCOVE

  • October 30 – January 21: Chuck & Vicki Schroeder

Thank you to our 2025 Venue Sponsors!