It’s a well-known fact that few visual artists working here in the Rust Belt have a realistic hope of making a living exclusively  from selling their art. So many find themselves  teaching to make a living while also trying to keep up their studio practice and actively showing their work. This requires energy, dedication, resourcefulness and maybe an ability to do without a full night’s sleep. The show currently in Gallery 117 displays the diverse skills of the hardworking  artists who give instruction at the Ann Arbor Art Center, from printmaking to painting to ceramics to animation and more.  In a show of this kind the technical  mastery of each artist is on display, and the artworks have to be enjoyed for their individual charms rather than appreciated in relation to an overarching theme. The level of skill on display is impressive, as one would expect from an instructional staff that is tasked with teaching the technical aspects in their area of expertise.

I came to the exhibit already knowing the work of some of the artists represented, among them Heather Accurso. I’ve liked Accurso’s drawings ever since I discovered them at Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago. Yet another MFA graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is a skilled draftsman who employs the image of a baby repeatedly– possibly  obsessively –in her precise and surreal drawings.

Another artist with whom I was already familiar and whose work I like is encaustic painter Beth Billups.  Her charming, childlike compositions occupy the aesthetic space between innocence and sophistication.  I find the waxy surfaces and subdued pastel palette and the formalized but allusive shapes immensely appealing.