Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Russo Sieber.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
ARS Gallery, Arts & Culture Center is a community art center, offering arts and culture classes, special programs, summer arts camps for ages 7-18 years, and art programs for underserved youth throughout our community and region for over 15 years. However Anna began as an artist, who began her journey over 30 years ago. She developed an arts program for an elementary school, was a teaching artist at an art museum for 15 years, worked out of 2 art studios (one at her home), and in 2010, founded ARS Arts & Culture. We started teaching there in the foundation of a summer arts camp that evolved into a full blown community art center. ARS just move from their location in Benton Harbor, to Lakeside, Mi. And continue to offer a large gallery exhibition space and various arts programs for adult and children alike.
Our Gallery has exhibitions for around the globe, artists from New Zealand, Italy, and across the US.
ARS Gallery supports public artists, muralists and multimedia paintings and ceramic and glass arts.
We have published 3 books created around exhibitions by John D Wilson, founder of the international Art Exposition in Chicago, Richard Hunts African collection “although he he is known for his sculptures globally, he also owned an extensive African Artifact collection”, and Jerry Catania, a talented glass artist, who worked with the likes of Chihuly.
ARS offers painting, mixed media, and italian culture classes for adults since the very beginning.
Our programs reach well outside of our city.
We began our journey on the foundation of a summer arts camp, bringing socially & economically diversely different youth under one concept-that all youth need the opportunity to create!
ARS has now expanded their reach to South Berrien County “Lakeside area” to broaden their reach in Southwest Mi., while continuing to offer arts education to the Benton Harbor area, through an artist in residency program, which we are already implementing.
This means we will go to the schools and centers to teach on site In Benton Harbor and we are excited to bring artists and opportunities to our BH youth.
We will continue to help and support to provide much needed life skills, mentorships, artists In residence and educational opportunities to hundreds of youth that would otherwise miss out on these experiences.
ARS has been teaching life skills, lessons in art, and providing a warm meal for our students for the past 15 plus years. The students that attend our cultural summer art camps at ARS, as well as mixed-media art after school – and then work towards semi private/private lessons, continue to grow and evolve with these ongoing experiences. These programs eventually lead to our College Prep Portfolio Class, which prepares youth bound for college, with a portfolio and essay in hand.
ARS also collaborates with art schools to help our teen students receive their first college credits at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago “SAIC” and OxBow.
ARS Arts & Culture has supported over 1600 hundred underserved youth alone and thousands of others in the past decade and a half and we look forward to reaching more through our regional expansion.
We continue to foster personal growth in our youth, through positive interaction, developing life skills, building confidence, and continuing to teach transferable life skills our youth can use in any aspect of their lives.
Not only do we mentor, offer dinners, and lessons in art, we provide a safe place to be during critical after school hours. ARS believes that our youth can say more through art than words alone. They rely on us for positive interaction and a nurturing environment!
ARS is now expanding our reach by offering artist in residence to our youth, right on their own campus! This allows us to offer more to a variety of other schools in Berrien County.
We have an urgency to help youth during challenging times, and you can help us achieve our goals!
ARS continues its mission to encourage enlighten and engage in the arts in our new location in Lakeside Michigan!
We love what we do
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When we started in 2010, it was a press release, word of mouth and hope for attendance for our classes and exhibitions. Our first opening we had 100 people come to support! Our summer camps we instantly filled however other classes took a couple of years to get off the ground. We offered a huge variety in the beginning and narrowed the offerings down to what worked!
Fundraising was new for me so it took a while to develop and have enough to run the programs. We have grown and developed into a successful community gallery and art center.
In the beginning it was myself and a newly hired administrative person and we both wore many hats-right down to cleaning the bathroom and mopping the floors.
The trick is to hire people who love this type of work.
You have to have a lot of energy to keep up with it all and to continue for 15 plus years. It is worth the hard work because as much as we help others it helps us feel like we are making a difference!
I think the most important part of your success are the people you surround yourself with-from administrative to teachers, from customers to your surrounding community. With collaborative efforts “we” have become successful in our efforts to bring unlimited art resources to our communities!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’ve been a teaching artist for over 35 years. I sold my work in galleries and home stores and taught at an art museum for 15 years. Before that I developed an art program at a local elementary school and implemented that. They had no art teacher at the time and I ran it for about 4 years. I also have had 2 art studios were I created italian style pottery and mixed media paintings-also was a cofounder of an artist collective. I am back at painting for the last 4 years. I had to carve out a time for myself and continue to create.
I am most proud of the last 15 years, it has allowed me to mentor and create programs for underserved youth-my love is also our gallery exhibitions-well honestly I love everything!
Pricing:
- Gallery exhibitions price points rang from 250. To 20,000
- Classes vary from 95 to 250
Contact Info:
- Website: Arsartsandculture.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arsgallery?igsh=MWRycnVrOWE4bGFjNQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1BCgHnjPr5/?mibextid=wwXIfr
