Ann Mikolowski

Ann Mikolowski, born in Detroit, Michigan in 1940, passed away in her Ann Arbor, Michigan home on August 6, 1999. She fought a long and inspiring battle with breast cancer.

Mikolowski was associated with the Cass Corridor art movement in Detroit. While attending Wayne State University and Center for Creative Studies in the 1960's, she and her husband, Ken Mikolowski, founded The Alternative Press. Their letterpress editions of contemporary poetry and art were celebrated in a thirty year retrospective exhibition and symposium at the Hatcher Graduate Library, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1999 and a twenty year retrospective at The Detroit Institute of Arts.

Light, clarity, and beauty infused her art. It was the collaboration between artists and writers that first inspired her miniature portraits, oil on linen, an intimate size for an intimate subject. These portraits were featured at the Gotham Book Mart in New York; Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco; The Saginaw Museum in Saginaw, Michigan; and a number of galleries. Solo exhibitions featured her work in New York, New York, San Francisco, California, Detroit, Michigan and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

While living for a time in Grindstone City, Michigan, Mikolowski painted the immense sky and water of nearby Lake Huron. "It would be impossible to ever make these paintings big enough," she said.

She was awarded the Michigan Arts Award from the Arts Foundation of Michigan and Individual Grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts. Her work is in private and public collections including The Detroit Institute of Arts and Absolut Vodka. Between 1994 and 1997, Mikolowski collaborated with Stewart & Stewart on four screenprint editions.