Featured Artist Exhibition

Rebecca Butler is a retired high school art teacher from Okemos, MI. After 35 years of teaching and over 40 years of painting, she continues to share her passion through watercolor workshops at Throw in Ann Arbor, REACH Art Studio in Lansing, and Brave Art in Allegan.

Rebecca holds a bachelor’s degree in Art Education from Western Michigan and a master’s in Art Therapy from Wayne State. She participates in the Strada Easel Challenge each year, completing 31 paintings in 31 days, and attends plein air retreats in West Michigan every May and September.

Rebecca is a proud member of several art organizations, including the Mid-Michigan Art Guild, the Michigan Watercolor Society, and the Great Lakes Plein Air Painters. Watercolor is her favorite medium, focusing on nature and rural landscapes. Rebecca recently developed a signature batik style using watercolor on rice paper, which she is currently teaching in a Watercolor Batik class at REACH.

Mark Chatterley is an internationally recognized artist living and working in Michigan. He has a BFA and an MFA from Michigan State University and has over 40 years of experience. He creates high-fired ceramic pieces and deals primarily in life-sized figurative work, both human and animal. He has shown in gallery and museum exhibitions throughout the USA and internationally and his work is in several private and public collections.

Teagan Chatterley is an artist and designer. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Michigan State University and a Master of Design in Designed Objects degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Combining her knowledge of sculpture and designed objects, Chatterley has been investigating the division and overlap of form, materiality, and implied emotions within each. Inspired by quirky objects, social interactions, culture, and the natural world, Chatterley seeks to continually expand her comfort zones through an exploratory lens.

Julian Van Dyke is a Lansing-based actor, painter, muralist, illustrator, and children’s author. As a stage actor, he’s appeared in numerous Riverwalk Theatre productions—including Bus Stop, Cobb, Bud, Not Buddy, Sweat, Fabulation, and The Exonerated. Van Dyke also serves on its Board of Directors.

As a visual artist, Van Dyke has completed several commissioned murals throughout Lansing, including his most recent at the Reading People/Capital Area Literacy Coalition. He was represented by Agora Gallery in New York and showcased at the sold-out Red Dot art fair in Miami.

Julian is also the author of eight children’s books, including The Music We Call Jazz, Juneteenth: Celebrating Freedom, and Does This Make You a Bully?, as well as a coloring book, So You Think You Can Color? He regularly visits schools to inspire creativity in young students.

Laurén Gerig is a visual artist based in Lansing, Michigan. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from Michigan State University and a BS in Studio Art from Indiana Wesleyan University. Her expressive, color-rich paintings explore landscape, memory, and our relationships with the environments we move through.

Her work has been featured in solo, group, and national juried exhibitions at venues such as Customs House Museum (TN), The Schmidt Art Center (IL), Sarratt Gallery at Vanderbilt University, and Soft Projects in Ypsilanti, MI. Laurén has participated in artist residencies with Golden Apple Studios, The Sable Project, and La Macina di San Cresci in Italy.

She has been interviewed by Visionary Art Collective and featured in Create! Magazine, CandyFloss Magazine, and various online art platforms. In addition to her studio practice, Laurén is the Director of Galleries & Outreach and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, & Design at Michigan State University.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Jim LeTerneau holds both a BFA and MFA from Michigan State University. While developing his career as a jewelry artist, Jim taught in the Art Department at Lansing Community College from 1975 to 1984.

For over four decades, his award-winning work has been featured in craft galleries and art fairs nationwide. From 1999 to 2009, he owned and operated Mindscape Gallery in Evanston, Illinois, a space dedicated to contemporary fine craft.

Now based in East Lansing, Michigan, LeTerneau continues to create one-of-a-kind jewelry using traditional metalsmithing techniques and a wide range of materials, from sterling silver to recycled elements. Each piece is one of a kind.

Valentino Orlando is an oil painter living and working in Baltimore; after pursuing his BFA in Studio Art at Michigan State University, Orlando was accepted to the LeRoy E. Hoffberger Painting program at the Maryland Institute and College of Art. His work is enigmatic, grabbing from recognizable objects and trying to undermine their qualities in paint. What may have been soft becomes hard, and what may have been orthogonal becomes warped. He craves an empirical relationship between form and space in an age where perception is skewed by digital forms and spaces. Blocky shapes tug at the human inclination to touch, asking to be picked up and examined in the round, while the viewer isn’t sure if they are flying or falling.

Orlando has exhibited in Atrium Artspace, Maryland Art Place, The Peale Museum, and is the recipient of the Marta S. Henschel Schafer Scholarship, the Ralph Henricksen Award, and the MICA Merit Scholarship. He has also received the Free Fall grant from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and the MICA RCCE Just/Start Idea Competition.