[Side Arts Certified Sponsored Listing] John Michael Kohler Arts Center announces a call for artists for the Midsummer Festival of the Arts 2023. This year’s festival will be July 15 – 16, 2023. The event will feature up to 100 juried artists including returning award winners from last year. The Arts Center will host an emerging artist area for up to five artists, offering an opportunity for collegiate and rising artists to learn about business in the arts.
Click here for the application / registration
Enter by: 1 March 2023
Acceptance notifications will be sent to artists on April 4, 2023.
The Midsummer Festival of the Arts remains committed to “generating a creative exchange between artists and the public.” Held at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in downtown Sheboygan, Wisconsin, a few blocks from Lake Michigan, the Festival, now in its 53rd year, nurtures connections between artists and community. This weekend event offers live music and performances, exhibitions, hands-on art making, demonstrations, food, and fun on the grounds of the Arts Center and Sheboygan’s City Green. To ensure the continued participation of as many interested artists as possible, exhibiting artists’ fees are kept moderate and many amenities are provided.
In response to the exhibition on view during the festival, Cloth as Land: Hmong Indigeneity, and in celebration of the Sheboygan Hmong Summer Festival happening the same weekend, an additional minimum of five artists of Hmong heritage will be selected to be featured inside the Arts Center. The Arts Center may designate additional spaces for local and community partnerships coordinated and selected by Arts Center staff.
Midsummer Festival of the Arts Artist Awards
Cash awards will be given based on the artist’s entire body of work. Excellence, regardless of medium, will be the determining factor. Judging will take place on Saturday, July 15, between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Awards will be announced and presented on Sunday, July 16; prizewinners who do not return to exhibit on Sunday forfeit the award.
Artist Amenities
- 15,000-20,000 people are anticipated to attend this event.
- An early shopping opportunity for Art Patrons is provided. Guests who attend our Art Patron Breakfast get first shopping opportunity and promise to spend a minimum of $100 on art at the festival.
- Complimentary booth-sitting service will be provided, subject to availability.
- A detailed or complete view of one image from each artist’s slides will be shown on the Arts Center’s website. Artists can choose to have their contact information displayed as well. (The Arts Center does not release this information to patrons.)
- Artists will be able to purchase Festival T-shirts in advance.
- Security guards patrol the grounds Friday and Saturday nights.
- Advertising, digital marketing, billboards, newspapers, television coverage, radio ads, Festival newspaper inserts, day-of-Festival program, cooperative advertising, Arts Center website, and the Art Patron Program reach local and regional buyers.
About John Michael Kohler Arts Center
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is a lively visual and performing arts complex dedicated to generating creative exchanges between an international community of artists and a diverse public. JMKAC’s original exhibitions, commissioned works of art, performing arts, community arts initiatives, education programs, and publications promote appreciation of and engagement with the work of contemporary and self-taught artists. The Arts Center actively nurtures emerging and mid-career artists, giving them a range of opportunities to create new work including the internationally respected Arts/Industry residency program.
For more information, contact midsummerfestival@jmkac.org.
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[Sponsored Listing] The John Michael Kohler Arts Center invites you to submit a proposal for a project that shares a personal response to one or more artworks on the first floor of the Art Preserve, the home of the Arts Center’s collection of artist-built environments. Every visitor to the Art Preserve connects to the work in a different way. How can an emotional response become a poem, a nostalgic connection be translated into dance, musings of future dreams and visions be interpreted in song, or newfound questions about our world be depicted through sculpture?
Sharing these responses fosters new understandings about the collection, each other, and ourselves. The Arts Center invites makers of all mediums to submit proposals for work that makes tangible their response to the first floor of the Art Preserve.
Click here for the application / registration
Enter by: 16 May 2022
Accepted proposals will be exhibited at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
- Notification of Acceptance by Friday, June 10, 2022
- Completed Projects Due by Monday, August 29, 2022
- Exhibition: October 2022–February 2023, exact dates TBD
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is world-renowned for artist environments and generating a creative exchange between artists and the public. Artists selected will have the chance to create responsive art based on the Art Preserve exhibitions and be featured alongside other talented artists selected to show the impact that art makes. Additionally, artists who have a connection to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center receive regular communication regarding additional opportunities.
About the John Michael Kohler Arts Center
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is a lively visual and performing arts complex dedicated to generating creative exchanges between an international community of artists and a diverse public. JMKAC’s original exhibitions, commissioned works of art, performing arts, community arts initiatives, education programs, and publications promote appreciation of and engagement with the work of contemporary and self-taught artists. The Arts Center actively nurtures emerging and mid-career artists, giving them a range of opportunities to create new work including the internationally respected Arts/Industry residency program.
For more information, contact xfiss@jmkac.org.
Image: Installation view of works by Carl Peterson (foreground) and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein at the Art Preserve, 2021.
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[Sponsored Listing] The John Michael Kohler Arts Center announces a call for artists for the 2023 Arts/Industry Residencies. For more than forty years, Arts/Industry has been connecting artists with the resources, technology, and materials of Kohler Co, as well as providing a place to explore new ideas, processes, and perspectives. Artists from all disciplines are encouraged to apply.
Each year, up to twelve artists are selected for residencies in the pottery or foundry areas of the factory through a competitive jury process. No experience with clay or cast metal is required, just an interest in pursuing a new body of work and being open to new ideas.
Click here for the application / registration
Enter by: 14 Mar 2022
Arts/Industry residencies are three months in length and divided into three cohorts. There are four artists-in-residence in each cohort: two in pottery and two in foundry. Residents are expected to commit to the full three-month period. Artists-in-residence receive 24-hour access to studio space, industrial materials, use of equipment, technical assistance, photographic services, housing, round-trip transportation, and a modest weekly stipend.
Hundreds of artists have benefited from the celebrated Arts/Industry residency program since its beginning in 1974. The program, undoubtedly one of the most unusual ongoing collaborations between art and industry in the United States, was conceived and is administered by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center and hosted by Kohler Co.
Arts/Industry offers artists the time and space to focus on the creation of new work and a unique location for their studios. Artists-in-residence work at the Kohler Co factory in the pottery and/or foundry. Artists need not have experience with clay or metal, just an interest in materials and the potential for the industrial environment and processes to influence their creative practice. Participants are exposed to a body of technical knowledge that enables and encourages them to explore new ways of thinking and working.
About John Michael Kohler Arts Center
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center located north of Milwaukee in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was founded in 1967. It is dedicated to making innovative exhibitions and arts programming accessible to a broad audience. Central to its mission is promoting understanding and appreciation of the work of self-taught and contemporary artists through original exhibitions, commissioned works of art, performing arts programs, and community arts initiatives. Since the 1970s, JMKAC has preserved, studied, and exhibited works by art-environment builders and has earned a worldwide reputation for its work in this area. Art environments involve an individual significantly transforming their surroundings—for example, their home or yard—into an exceptional, multifaceted work of art.
The Arts Center’s downtown Sheboygan facility includes eight galleries, two performance spaces, a café, a retail shop, and a drop-in art-making studio. Among its program offerings are community arts projects; artist residencies; presentations of dance, film, and music; a free weekly summer concert series; classes and workshops; an onsite arts-based preschool program; and approximately twelve originally curated exhibitions of the work of self-taught and contemporary artists annually. The John Michael Kohler Arts Center also administers the renowned Arts/Industry residency program, which is hosted by Kohler Co.
For more information, contact artsindustry@jmkac.org.
Image: Arts/Industry artist-in-residence Kate Klingbeil in the Kohler Co Foundry, 2020. Photo: Kohler Co, courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.