Local Artist Exhibit

Join the library for an evening celebrating and showcasing local art on January 18 at 5:15 PM. Enjoy hors d’oeuvres, meet & greet with our local artists, and enjoy their wonderful art-perhaps take a piece or two home with you.

Meet our Artists

Jim Draze

A native of the U.P., the outdoors was my playground. A bicycle was my passport to lakes, streams, waterfalls, woodlots, and fishing. During my youth, there was an “artistic itch” nagging at me, but never scratched. In 2006, seeing an end to my regular work life in Public Health, I enrolled in an “after work internship” in metal arts design and fabrication in a Kalamazoo metal arts studio and smithery. After retirement, I built my own backyard forge and smithery, tried it for a year, and found it too large and the outdoor environment was not conducive to year-round work.

Then, I discovered copper, and moved my metal work indoors and went to work cutting, pounding, sawing, forming, and enameling copper. I started creating “designs from nature” that I learned to love as a boy.

My jewelry pieces now consist of enamel on copper pieces fabricated from salvaged (mostly) copper pipe and ground glass (the enamel), hand-crafted fine silver castings on hand-tooled copper, and some precious stones set in sterling silver. I endeavor to stay true to my love for designs from nature and much of my work is in, or on copper.

I offer handcrafted jewerly: enamel on copper pendants and pins, a variety of stones and precious gems set in silver or copper, some beach glass pendants, and some Petoskey stone pendants.

I create my pendants and pins from raw materials, cutting figures by hand and firing, soldering, etc., by hand. My work is currently offered for sale in the Michilimackinac Historic Society “Made in Michigan” Gift Shop.

I am a happy resident of St. Ignace, MI

Veronica Danks Lozen

I remember my first art class at age 4 and winning my first art show contest at age 5. I’ve always been drawn to color and how to recreate nature and images. I continued to grown and learn as the years went on switching my mediums constantly; pencil, crayon, watercolor, acrylic, chalk, calligraphy, ink, metals, pottery, drafting, geometry, landscaping and carpentry. I see art and color in everything. I’ve recently begun using items from nature in my work in an effort to learn native plants. Lines and basic form with ink and acrylic are what I always go back to. It feels the most comfortable to me and allows me to express myself in my art.

Audrey Fick

Audrey J. Fick was born in Detroit and eventually moved to the Upper Peninsula in the late sixties. She obtained her BS Degree from Lake Superior State University in June of 2015. She has authored six novels of which five are published and the sixth is very close to being released. The books are entitled Corruption at Jamestown Prison 2010, Who is Ellen Roquefort – 2012, Murder in the Snows – 2018, Revelation at the Snows – 2019, Marquette Island, View from the Snows – 2020 and currently The Constipated Elephant, a Mystery at Pennington House. Audrey is the mother of six children, eleven grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. She has written feature stories from time to time for The St. Ignace News also a fiction editor for the fifth edition of Border Crossing an international literary journal. Her book review of Mark Jacobs’ Forty Wolves was published in 2015 of Peace Corp Magazine.

Ruth LaChapelle

I have been very blessed in that I was born and have lived my entire life in St. Ignace, located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For many years photography has been a passion for me. I have learned never to take anything for granted. Around every corner, with each new dawn, lies something exciting…something beautiful…something that literally takes your breath away. I love experiencing, as well as preserving, these wonderfully exciting, beautiful moments. I also love to travel and share those photos and experiences as well. Life is too short not to enjoy every moment! Take time to enjoy the beauty that surrounds us.