PAN-O-PLY STORY & ART MICHIANA

Midwest museum of american art

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Heartland artists gallery

Featured artist gallery

Dennis Anderson Spring 2024

Anderson believes “art should rightly include video games, comic books, and cartoons—as well as fine art. I’m a commercial artist, [so] in my opinion,” he says, “that’s art.”

Now at age 51, Anderson can look back with perspective on his wide-ranging career that incorporates work for such local clients as: Mishawaka’s Corndance Tavern and Evil Czech Brewery and Public House, and South Bend’s Potawatomi Zoo.

He is proud to say his designs—including a quirky, battle-axe-bearing chipmunk wearing medieval armor—illustrate popular India pale ales Evil Czech-munk from Evil Czech Brewery.

Alan Larkin Winter 2025

Teaching was important to Larkin’s father and remains so for Alan Larkin today. Eugene Larkin taught design at the University of Minnesota-St. Paul, while son Alan Larkin over nearly forty years, taught a variety of art courses—from etching, lithography, and silkscreen to book art, paper-making, figure drawing, and artistic anatomy - as an associate professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Indiana University-South Bend, retiring eleven years ago. He still teaches workshops for arts organizations throughout Indiana.

“I like teaching,” he says. “It’s useful to organize your thoughts and write them down so you can share them with others. It’s a good way to learn yourself . . . to learn from problems in the studio and rationalize your way through them.” Sometimes his art students teach him tactical ideas, such as using a roller to block out dark areas on a canvas quickly.

Historic preservation is also of interest to Larkin, who owns four properties in South Bend, including a former Studebaker mansion and, next door to his home, a house he rents to visitors through Airbnb.

“Mostly I consider myself to have been absurdly lucky to have had a life in art,” says Larkin.

KATHARINE SCHMIDT - Rebel Fall 2024

A singular event in one’s life will set someone on a lifelong passion or career. For Katharine Schmidt, it took only one painting that spoke to her on a massive level to spark a career both teaching and creating art. 

Born in Indiana, Schmidt moved to Edwardsville, Illinois, at 13. There, she stayed and attended University of Illinois before transferring to the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, graduating there in 1976 with a master’s in fine arts. After graduating, she moved to Seattle Washington, with her husband, who was stationed there as a United States Public Health Service member. She continued her education there, studying drawing at the Seattle Academy of Fine Arts – now called Gage Academy– and becoming a Foundations instructor there. 

Kei Constantinov Fall 2023

Kei Constantinov’s art transports the viewer back in time offering a glimpse of times past with updated style and modern twists. Her style is neo medieval, evoking the style of art that adorned Europe in transition.              

“I would say that people are more familiar with the Renaissance,” Constantinov says, “but it’s neo medieval which is a particular penchant of mine.”

This body of work has been in process since 2013, after Constantinov moved into her childhood home on Trail Creek in Michigan City after moving back to the area from Ann Arbor, Michigan.