2024 Meet the Artists

The Art Seen Festival is returning to Midland for its fourth year, showcasing mural making and performances by local musicians. The festival will take place June 1 and 2, 2024 and promises to be bigger and better than ever before. This year's festival will feature a community mural in Downtown Midland and 2 commissioned murals: one in Lee Township and one in The Neighborhood.

The Art Seen Committee invites you to come pick up a brush and become an artist! Help create the community mural for Pizza Sam’s from 10am-5pm. The concept for this mural was created by Saginaw Artist Allise Noble and will be painted on wood panels by the public at Main St and Gordon St, and will later be installed on the Pizza Sam’s wall facing Ashman Street in Downtown Midland. Miranda Wojda, daughter of Gus and Angela, owners of Pizza Sam’s said, “We are so excited to showcase this beautiful art on our building! It’s going to be a great representation of the community that we strive to create and maintain everyday.”

The first of two commissioned murals will be painted during the festival at LaLonde’s Market on the corner of Jefferson and Sugnet, lovingly called The Neighborhood by community members in the area. The Art Seen Festival committee recently made the final selection for the artist who will paint at this site. It’s actually a group of artists called Often Seen Rarely Spoken from Louisville, Kentucky. They are on a mission to use murals as a means of visual storytelling and create imagery the residents feel a genuine connection to. The community members are encouraged to stop by Lalondes between 10am-5pm on both days, to see the mural being painted and engage in fun activities with local businesses on Saturday.

Lee Bar & Grill’s gorgeous blue building in Lee Township on M-20 will be the home of the festival's third mural by Colorado artist David Swartz. His artwork is bright and energetic with a humorous twist as you will see as the unveiling of his artwork comes to fruition over the festival weekend. He strives to use his art to create beauty and connection between people, nature and themselves creating a sense of unity. When asked how he felt about joining us in Midland he said, “I’m excited to join the Art Seen Festival for this year's event! I love the power public art has to transform a space and brighten people’s day. This is an especially cool event as it’s the first one I’m doing that’s not located in a major city. I think art should be accessible to everyone and I’m glad to help facilitate that. My mural will highlight the awesome power of imagination to whisk you away to new worlds. To plaster a smile on your face as you’re rocketed into a new dimension where anything is possible.”

In addition to mural creation, the festival will also offer the opportunity to listen to live music from local musicians, presented by The Blue Light Music Venue. Performances will take place in the evening at the Music On Main stage at McDonald and Main St. from 6-9pm on both Saturday and Sunday.

"We're thrilled to bring the Art Seen Festival back to Midland for another year," said Dacia Parker, owner of Parker Lane Art & Design Studios, which will once again be facilitating the community mural. "Our goal is to create an inclusive and welcoming space for all community members, artists and art enthusiasts alike, to be part of the mural making process, give a platform for local musicians, and in the end have three new murals that beautify and connect to our community that will be enjoyed for years to come."

Admission is free, as is painting on the community mural, making the festival accessible to everyone. There will be festival merchandise to pre-order and available at the festival to further our work in the public mural making space for years to come.

Art Seen Festival is a subcommittee of Public Arts Midland, which is an initiative of the Midland Area Community Foundation. We are thrilled to once again be celebrating alongside the Midland Center for the Arts Summer Art Fair and Creative 360’s Art Speaks Play Festival. This is going to be another incredible art-filled weekend bringing people together!

Learn more about this year’s artists below.

Meet the Artists

Meet Allise

Allise Noble’s concept been selected for the community mural to be created for Pizza Sam’s for the 2024 Art Seen Festival! She will work with the team from Parker Lane Art & Design Studios to bring this concept to life.

Allise is an award winning Michigan artist with a background in fine art and interior design. She teaches art to creators of all ages and abilities throughout the Great Lakes Bay region, and is especially passionate about working with artists with disabilities and mental health struggles. Her art celebrates the natural world around us and all those who inhabit it. Living things truly are works of art in and of themselves, but often our interior landscapes are even more interesting. Allise believes art should show us something we cannot see in real life, and enjoys visually exposing the unique mental environment of the subjects in my work. In each piece, she aims to begin a story that the viewer gets to finish. Allise believes everyone is an artist in some way, and it is never too late to begin. She loves empowering others to share their creativity with the world.

Meet Often Seen Rarely SPOKEN

Often Seen Rarely Spoken has been selected as our LaLonde’s Market muralist team for the 2024 Art Seen Festival!

OSRS is a commercial art team out of Louisville, Kentucky who have been creating murals in communities across the Eastern United States since 2016. Our mission is simple: to interact with our visual environment. We want to create public art that speaks to the community and tells local history. Our goal is for our work to wow youngsters, inspire individuals, and encourage pride from residents of all ages.

Our processes involve a variety of techniques from photography, to graphic design, to screen printing, to virtual reality set-ups. Much of our work involves typography and dimensional lettering, which we lay bold solid shapes and patterns against to juxtapose an aesthetic that feels rich and stimulating while not overly complex. Imagery in our work often relates to relics of the past – a telephone booth, an analog clock or a post box – gesturing an opportunity to produce dialogue from onlookers.

We consistently work in our two Kentucky studios to produce paintings and online merchandise that further explore our practices of self-expression. It is our goal to communicate with the public through as many mediums as possible, be that concrete, clothing, stickers, social media, or an art gallery.

Learn more on the OSRS website.
Instagram: @oftenseenrarelyspoken
Facebook: Often Seen Rarely Spoken
Email: osrsart@gmail.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT6hcY2br6s

MEET DAVID

David Swartz has been selected as our Lee Bar & Grill muralist for the 2024 Art Seen Festival!

David is a professional artist living in Denver CO. He works with various water based paints to create bright and energetic artwork with a humorous twist. He strives to use his art to create beauty and connection. Connecting people with each other, nature, and themselves. These connections are what enrich the world, and create a sense of unity that helps dissolve the isolation, hate, and selfishness that pollute so many people's lives.

Learn more on David’s website.
Instagram: @david.doeswork

MEET The Parker Lane Team

Parker Lane Art & Design Studios has facilitated our community murals since year one! Dacia and Jazz designed our first community murals, collaborated with Selena Ashley Designs in 2023, and are now looking forward to collaborating with Allise to bring another incredible community mural to Midland!

Meet Dacia

Midland, MI based artpreneur, Dacia Livingston Parker received her first oil paint set at age seven which sparked a myriad of artistic ventures. After graduating from The University of Michigan School of Art and Design with a BFA, Dacia and her husband settled in the Seattle area for 13 years. Deeply inspired by the ocean, mountains, and natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest, those elements became foundational to her work. It was there that Dacia launched her own portrait photography studio, exploring the possibilities offered by digital media.

Returning home to Michigan in 2006, Dacia has been involved in the local arts community ever since; initially practicing photography and developing educational programming as a founding member of Captured Studios in the Ashman Plaza. She rebranded as Parker Lane Art & Design Studios in 2018 to offer a space for creative instruction and professional development for emerging artists, one of her passions. In her role as co-chair of Public Arts Midland, Dacia helps coordinate artistic projects in partnership with local community groups including management of numerous juried exhibitions and events. Within Ashman Plaza, Dacia curates and exhibits local up and coming artist shows regularly. Parker Lane Design and Art studio is a co-sponsor for the annual Emerging Artist show at Creative 360 in Midland, MI.

Dacia strongly believes that “ART is for Everyone” and that Public Art allows opportunity and access to the larger community to enjoy and engage with fine art installations throughout their city. Indeed, in recent years, Dacia has ventured back into painting and working with cyanotypes where her love of the elements - water, mountains and nature continue to inform her work exploring depth, movement, flow, and rhythm. Through her work with PAM, she has become a well-known muralist, collaborating with local artists and community partners.

A native of Michigan, Dacia is deeply dedicated to cultivating the arts in the Great Lakes Bay Region. She has a passion for mentoring emerging artists and building support for local artists and public arts projects in the area. As a practicing artist, Dacia is keenly aware of the issues facing artists today and as an arts administrator, provides a supportive climate while engaging in education and public outreach.

Learn more at http://parkerlane.art

Meet JAzz

Jazz has always been aware of the Spiritual world around them. Knowing that we are all called to a higher purpose, she has described their journey as “humbly complex & spiritually raw.” “Trust the journey” & “Enjoy the process”, these two phrases have become their mantras for getting through tough times in life and have also helped in the pursuit of purpose. Jazz says that their impatience as an artist can be somewhat of a conundrum, but their has been on an ongoing journey to learn “perspective of the present.” Like most people, Jazz finds the “chase” of the next idea or step in life to be exciting and somewhat frustrating. Jazz has come to understand that the here and now is more important to help define what comes next. Jazz hopes to inspire people to sit in their present moments and take the steps to Enjoy Life through art & existence.

Learn more at enjoylifejazzmynbenitez.com
Instagram: @enjoylifejzb
Email: enjoylifejzb@gmail.com