June 3, 2021—The Miller Art Museum, located in downtown Sturgeon Bay, invites the public to participate in a Land Scouts Exploratory Walk, part of the Museum’s Second Thursday Program Series, with Katie Ries, educator and visual artist who is represented in the Museum’s newest exhibition, Factory Made: Artists Explore the Industrial Scar. Ries will lead participants on a mini excursion in and around the exterior perimeter of the museum where the basics of land scouting will be discussed and maps created based on the group’s findings. The FREE program is set for Thursday, June 10 at 10:30am. All materials will be supplied and no previous experience is required. All ages are welcomed but minors are required to be accompanied by an adult. All participants should be able to cross the street unassisted. No advance registration is required.
Katie Ries received her B.A. in Studio art (Phi Beta Kappa) from the Colorado College in 2005 and her Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in Printmaking from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville in 2010. She is an interdisciplinary artist, cultivator, and teacher living in Northeast Wisconsin where she is an Associate professor of Art at St. Norbert College in De Pere. She makes artwork about modern environmentalism, community and the power of observational drawing. Her prints, objects, drawings and events invite viewers to participate in actions of amateur naturalism and iterative making. She is the founder of the Land Scouts, a program promoting foundations of land stewardship through simple and affordable actions. Her work is represented in public and private collections throughout the United States.
May 28, 2021—The Miller Art Museum is set to unveil Factory Made: Artists Explore the Industrial Scar on Saturday, June 5. With a focus on industry’s impact on the environment as well as the ordinary citizen’s role in changes to our environment, Factory Made presents work from five distinctly different artists—Brendan Baylor, the late James Cagle, Holli Jacobson, Melissa Resch, and Katie Ries—for exploration of the complex landscape with man’s relationship to nature. The exhibition is set to run through Monday, July 19, 2021.
In the Museum’s main galleries, 17 works by printmaker Brendan Baylor of Norfolk, VA present industrial maps as they are engineered over the landscapes they effect, revealing how the landscape is used and altered by industry from both artistic and scientific points of view. In addition to the lumber industry, the production of ethanol and greenhouse gasses, as well as coal and fossil fuel emissions, are included in Baylor’s explorations.
May 14, 2020 – The Miller Art Museum is pleased to partner with the Door County Medical Center, Jacksonport Women’s Club, The Townsend Foundation, John and Kathy Campbell, Dennis and Bonnie Connolly, Mike and Barb Madden, and Carl and Ruth Scholz in presenting the 47th Annual Salon of Door County High School Art (SoHSA) exhibition. This year’s exhibition features representation from 83 Peninsula high school students and nearly 100 works in a wide variety of media from the 2020-21 academic year from all five Peninsula schools: Gibraltar, Sevastopol, Southern Door, Sturgeon Bay and Washington Island High Schools. 
Due to the varying circumstances related to COVID-19 and impact on each participating school, the exhibition will be available to the public through the museum’s website where it will reside for viewing virtually. The museum invites all—students, families, guests and the general public—to visit at www.millerartmuseum.org. The annual exhibition celebrates the artistic accomplishments of Door Peninsula youth with representation from the Southernmost party of the County all the way north to Washington Island Each year a diverse range of ideas and concepts emerge from this collaborative exhibition. “We are both excited and honored to partner with our community and local art educators in this capacity to share the creative work of Door County’s talented young artists,” says Elizabeth Meissner-Gigstead, Miller Art Museum executive director.
April 29, 2021 — The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay is pleased to present, in collaboration with Jodi Rose Studio and participating partners, Home Grown. The 6-foot-wide public art project is featured alongside Mike & Schomer: Cows, Color and Camaraderie and is a grass roots response to the cancellation of much-needed summer youth programming during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. The piece is scheduled to be on display through Saturday, May 29, 2021. In conjunction with the public art display, the Museum’s Second Thursday Program on May 13 at 3pm will feature Jodi Rose Studio presenting Scribble Draw!, a virtual workshop focusing on fostering one’s inherent creativity.
Home Grown evolved from a consortium of mental health providers from Door County Health and Human Services and the United Way of Door County, including members of the Door County Mental Health Focus Group, STRIDE and STRIDE Creative. It simultaneously addressed questions such as What is our response to the pandemic? and Can we make a group-created artwork while social distancing? Further, participants were asked to consider How can the public interact with the completed piece? and Can we design and complete our piece in just a few weeks’ time?
April 15, 2021—The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay is set to unveil a new exhibition in its main galleries on Saturday, April 24, 2021. Mike + Schomer: Cows, Color and Camaraderie celebrates the friendship of Mike Judy and the regionally celebrated artist Schomer Lichtner (1974 – 2006) through their colorful and eccentric works. Featured in the exhibition are 45 works, comprised of 24 by Judy and 20 by Lichtner, with delightful surprises throughout from elegantly posed ballerinas to gritty jazz musicians and cigarette smoking fish to a cast of curious cows. In lieu of an opening reception, a May 13 program will feature Judy in conversation with Miller Art Museum Curator of Exhibitions Helen del Guidice; the program is set to broadcast live through the Museum’s Facebook at 6pm.
Del Guidice has taken a retrospective approach to the presentation of Judy’s body of work, which will also include a selection of new works—auto-biographical pastels on paper as portrayed in My Birth and The Church Song Nightmare, which are self-effacing and comical depictions of cornerstone moments in the artist’s life and portraits of jazz musicians, aquatic landscapes and his 2021 portrait of Lichtner, titled Schomer and Friends, that illustrates Lichtner’s signature ballerinas and cows.
Judy, a Door County artist, has distinguished himself from others working in a more traditional manner, stepping aside from the norm of landscapes, plein air and regional subjects in pursuit of intertwining his multi-disciplinary talents. Having studied both art and music, and participating as a musician in bands for most of his adult life, Judy continues to combine his two passions.