ARS Gallery, Arts & Culture Center
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.
Our Gallery has exhibited artists from around the globe, including New Zealand, Italy, and across the US. ARS Gallery supports public artists, muralists, multimedia painting, 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 Hunt’s African collection “although 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 has offered painting, mixed media, and Italian culture classes for adults since the very beginning. We have added film, fashion, and other languages & food traditions of the world to our cultural repertoire. Our programs also reach well outside of our small city. We began our journey on the foundation of a summer arts camp, bringing socially & economically diverse 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 Michigan, while continuing to offer arts education to the Benton Harbor area, through an artist-in-residency program, which we are already implementing. The date of ARS Grand Opening in the new Lakeside location is going to take place Saturday, May 16th, from 3-6pm.
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 1,600 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.
