We are pleased to announce that the 2025 CWC Artists in Residence have been selected! This program offers opportunities for artists working in any medium to promote a deeper experience with the natural world. The selected artists will spend the summer months with open access to the twenty-seven beautiful nature preserves owned and stewarded by the CWC, and create their work centered around that environment. Finished work will be displayed digitally on social media, on the CWC website, in the printed newsletter, as well as physically at the Fall Fundraiser on October 2nd of this year.

Multi-award winning costume creator Jay Batzner (b. 1974) is better known for his musical activities than his sewing skills. While he has sung in Tosca and danced in The Nutcracker, it is his repertoire of original compositions which has earned him the most recognition.

Jay is a composer who has Done Things and Been Performed Places. His catalog ranges from traditional ensembles such as natural horn + live electronics, 4-hand organ duo, and countertenor + alto sax, to the unusual and idiosyncratic ensembles of voice + piano, unaccompanied bassoon, and choir. His works have been performed on all habitable planets in the known universe.

As a collaborator, Jay has created music with numerous choreographers, visual artists, and poets. His interdisciplinary work with Team Hyena Puppet has led to the production of several science-based dance pieces, a journal article, a book chapter, several conference presentations, and a feature in Forbes. It is through this work that Jay claims to know more about hyena mating behaviors than any other musician on the planet.

Currently, Jay rambles about music and various tangents (comic books, science fiction, hyena mating behaviors, etc.) at Central Michigan University. He has degrees from Serious Places, but that was a long time ago. Right now, Jay is completing his first full-length opera (his first opera was pretty short) and trying to get better at chess. Actually, right now Jay is writing this biography, but you get the idea.

Marissa Cook is an art educator and mixed media artist based in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, whose practice incorporates drawing, painting, and printmaking techniques. She holds a BA from Alma College and an MFA from the University of Dundee, Scotland. Her work has been shown regionally, and she has illustrated two children’s books published in 2017 and 2020. Most recently, she works with botanical inks and ecoprinting to examine local ecosystems and human interaction with the environment. She teaches studio art and art history at Alma College.

Denise Whitebread Fanning is an artist and curator, living in central Michigan. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and is currently the Art Coordinator for Central Michigan University Libraries and the Gallery Director for the University’s Baber Room Gallery. Her work as an independent artist and installation sculptor blends her unique perspectives on human nature with her reverence for the natural world and emphasizes the urgency of tending and nurturing in times of societal and environmental turmoil. She is a mother, a lover of flora and fauna, a deep observer, a curious explorer, and a ceaseless maker. 

Cheryl Meyer has been practicing watercolor and mixed media for the last seven years, focusing on scenes and moments she captures on trail runs, hikes, bike rides, etc. (with my phone…yay, technology!), and work at home on those spaces she love, with the goal of bringing those spaces to a wider audience. 

Painting and creative writing have been Cheryl’s loves. She started in art at CMU in the ’80s, but a series of circumstances led her to drop out of college, then return to English. She earned a BS (English major, Art History minor) in ’92, and an MA in English (Creative Writing focus) in ’98. She’s had several poems and, most recently, two pieces of flash fiction published.

Even with the shift to writing, she still dabbled in visual arts, taking up watercolor, while teaching a variety of English and writing courses at Mid-Michigan College and Montcalm Community College.

Once Covid shut things down, and she was home in nature, she expanded her painting, taking commissions from friends that led to her meeting the directors at Art Reach in Mount Pleasant. This meeting led to her teaching watercolor workshops (as well as poetry and flash fiction), submitting a proposal for a show.

In July 2022, Cheryl’s solo show “Paper Trails and Leaves”, featuring watercolors on paper and acrylic on pressed leaves, ran at Art Reach. In September 2024, Cheryl collaborated with colored pencil artist Julie Wells for a show, “Natural Transitions” at Art Reach.

Cheryl continues to teach English at Mid-Michigan College and Montcalm Community College, as well as workshops in watercolor and creative writing at Art Reach in Mt. Pleasant, for Mid-Michigan College’s Lifelong Learning (Mount Pleasant and Harrison). She is also part of the Michigan Arts Access Artist-in-Residence program, teaching watercolor to kids and young adults with developmental disabilities. 

Her paintings are relaxation that provide resources for shows in summer and fall, with inspiration found on the trails, the open road, the poem and the short story. Everything is a creative prompt.  

Michigan Artist Gordon E. Szczubelek received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Central Michigan University in 1984. Beginning using Acrylics ten years prior, he is now approaching fifty years of painting. Although known for his wildlife work and pet portraiture, Gordon’s landscapes have adorned the covers of many publications. His abstract cloudscapes have been displayed in many corporate offices and lecture halls. 

Gordon has generously donated artwork to Associations such as Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever and Trout Unlimited, to name just a few. 

Instead of pursuing a Master’s degree, Gordon’s career journey has given him forty years of gallery and frame shop management throughout Michigan. He spent ten years in the Harbor Springs area, most known for his work with The Whistling Moose Wildlife Gallery of Petoskey and By the Bay Nautical Fine Arts gallery of Harbor Springs. 

Throughout that time, Gordon has released many limited edition prints and has learned that to be an artist, one has to be flexible with the trends of the marketplace. Although he admits not to being a very disciplined painter, he has still managed to paint hundreds of commissioned pieces. 

In 2008 he gravitated back to the Central Michigan area and the Tri Cities working for the Hobby Lobby Corporation as a Custom Framing manager. 

Gordon has painted murals in the Discovery Museum of Mount Pleasant and written and illustrated two poetry books. He has had three solo exhibitions at the Saginaw Twp Hall in the past four years and won the Berlein Special Merit Award of 2022 and Purchase Award of 2024.