Tusen Takk Featured in Traverse Magazine
Tusen Takk was featured in this month’s Traverse, Northern Michigan’s Magazine, in an article entitled “Tusen Takk in Leelanau County Gives Artists a Place to Create.”
The article highlights how Tusen Takk came to be, its mission as established by founders Geoffrey Peckham and Patricia Melzer, and 2021 artist-in-residence Nishiki Sugawara-Beda.
“Giving artists a time and a place to create seemed like the right calling for us in terms of giving a sense of worth and value to what it is that they bring to the world,” Peckham says. “That in itself is an incredible gift, so that’s why this whole place is named Tusen Takk. It’s a sense of gratitude.”
Nishiki Sugawara-Beda, a Japanese American visual artist based in abstract painting, was Tusen Takk Foundation’s artist-in-residence in July and August 2021. During that time, she experimented in her process of producing sumi ink, the traditional East Asian medium she often works with.
Sugawara-Beda travels to various places to burn organic materials to produce soot that she then uses to form abstract landscape paintings. She says, “Both the act of producing soot and the very materials allow me to be in touch with a specific land, which then allows me to have narratives in my painting.”
Featured Artist
