By Wendy Murkve
NorthSide Artists Group

While we are disappointed that we haven’t been able to meet, create art together, or share our art with our Northside neighbors these last several months, members of the NorthSide Artists Group (NSAG) continue to create art in many forms. 

We asked our artists for an update on what they have been working on, and we learned what we already knew: artists never stop creating. 

Photographer Ron McKinley is working on a variety of seasonal images from Door County and Madison. Ron also makes frames and is busy completing an order for his custom frames.

Artist Susan Hoffman is also an author. She is working on writing and illustrating a children’s book, a sequel to one she wrote a few years ago. The tentative title is “Henry’s Play on Words,” and the book includes word challenges for Henry and the readers to solve. 

Artist and photographer Rachel Hahn has been busy establishing a brand and social media presence. She writes that she is “using the restrictive times of the pandemic as a way to get back to basics … within myself, a process much easier said than done.”

My own projects include completing an online black-and-white photography class through Madison College. In November, I started a personal photography project, Madison Northside 365, sharing an image of something that makes the Northside special each day for a year. 

We have a second author in our midst, as well. Jason Van Pelt recently published a children’s book about a reindeer who reunites with her mother. 

Teresa Mertens-Pellitteri writes that she is using her photography skills as she works on a photo journal to submit to the Wisconsin State Historical Society’s COVID-19 Journal Project: Collecting History as it Happens. “It has motivated me to take pictures during this period of time when I don’t feel inclined to.”

This is a small sampling of how our members spent time during 2020. We hope we can share our work with you at the Lakeview Library, Warner Park Community Recreation Center and other Northside spaces in 2021. 

NSAG is a growing collective of visual artists on the Northside, bringing together artists to share their work and to help build a community of artists that work together and support one another. 

For more information about NSAG, check us out on Facebook at facebook.com/northsideartists.