Traverse City, MI
On the shores of Grand Traverse Bay, Michigan's cherry capital has grown into a surprising mural destination. The Warehouse District's converted industrial spaces and the lively blocks of Front Street carry works that celebrate the region's Anishinaabe heritage, its spectacular freshwater landscape, and the seasonal rhythms of orchard country. Northern Michigan's light — that particular Great Lakes glow — shows up on every wall.
Featured Artists
All artists →Gwen Carlisle
Plein air painter and muralist who has spent twenty years documenting the light of Grand Traverse Bay across all four seasons. Her Warehouse District piece "Bay Season" compresses a full year of bay observations — the ice-edge blue of February, the milky summer haze, the sharp copper of October — into a single panoramic work.
Reed Baumgartner
Third-generation cherry farmer turned muralist whose work celebrates the agricultural landscape of the Leelanau and Old Mission peninsulas. Baumgartner's Front Street piece is a love letter to cherry season — the white-bloomed orchards, the red-painted ladders, the late-afternoon gold of harvest — painted with the intimate knowledge of someone who grew up in those trees.
Marlene Shawboose
Odawa artist and enrolled member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians whose large-scale work centers the waterway knowledge and seasonal cycles of Anishinaabe people in the Great Lakes region. Her Boardman Avenue mural traces the traditional canoe routes of Traverse Bay in the visual language of birchbark scrolls and Woodland painting.