“I speak more easily through photographs.” These words appear in the introduction to Ann Ray’s Love Looks Not Through The Eyes: Thirteen Years With Lee Alexander McQueen.

• visual art
• Grand Rapids Art Museum
• GRAM
• fashion
• Alexander McQueen

Arts exhibitions and performances have returned in full swing to West Michigan. 

Asked to put together a bit of live entertainment for an EMI Film Studios Christmas party, Richard O’Brien, aspiring actor and lover of B movies, wrote a song called “Science Fiction Double Feature.” It went over pretty well.

• Grand Rapids Civic Theatre
• theatre
• theatre reviews
• Rocky Horror Show

Arts exhibitions and performances have returned in full swing to West Michigan. This season, there’s absolutely no shortage of concerts, symphonies, plays, musicals, ballet, visual arts and beyond. 

• Grand Rapids Symphony
• dance
• jazz
• Ballet
• Classical Music
• Theater
• symphony
• Art Museums

Rhiannan Sibbald says she’s one of those textbook stories of someone who’s been artist their whole life, and she owes that to her parents.

• Artist Profiles
• Murals
• Rhiannan Sibbald

You want to commemorate something. That band, maybe—the one whose music you’d listen to late at night, when the world was crumbling around you. 

• Tattoos
• Sovereign Arms Tattoo

The hit jukebox musical “Jersey Boys” begins with a foreshadowing on two levels. 

Yuka Oba grew up in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, in a hometown nestled among mountains. An active, imaginative child, she would sometimes straddle a broomstick and run around the house, losing herself in dreams of flying.

• Ballet
• Grand Rapids Ballet
• Artist Profiles
• Yuka Oba-Muschiana

In an age when you can find images of everything from the most ancient sculptures to the most groundbreaking new art online, there’s still nothing quite like seeing art in person. Fortunately, West Michigan has a vibrant array of galleries where you stroll, stare… and maybe pick out something to take home.

• The DAAC
• Grand Rapids Art Museum
• Kendall College of Art and Design
• Art Galleries
• ArtRat Gallery
• Gallery 154
• LaFontsee Galleries
• Lions & Rabbits

For Thiago Porraz, it began in school with art classes, then turned into a hobby at home, which grew into a true passion.

• artprize
• Kendall College of Art and Design
• Artist Profiles
• Thiago Porraz