A Benzie Central High School student is headed to Isle Royale tomorrow for an artist residency for teenagers.
Elsa Carter won a national competition for high-school-age artists to spend a week painting the island’s rugged landscape. It's called the Teen Artist Exploration Program.
“I have been drawn to painting my entire life,” Carter said. “It sounds a little cliché, but it was literally — the walls were gonna get it, or my parents were going to give me paper and pen.”
She specializes in plein air painting: painting outside, usually in nature, capturing the scenes around her.
One quiet, cloudy, morning on the side of M-22, she had her easel set up to paint Dechow Farm in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
She uses a special easel for plein air painting. It’s wooden with a little pull-out drawer for all of Elsa’s tools, and covered with paint splatters from the easel’s past owners.
“It was a gift to me from a family friend who had to go to a nursing home, and this was her favorite plein air easel,” Carter said.
Elsa has taken art classes at school, but she says she is mostly self-taught when it comes to plein air painting techniques.
“I learned basically everything from Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube,” she said.
She found out about the teen artist residency on Isle Royale from her art teacher, Cory Bechler. The application involved submitting art samples, writing an essay and getting a letter of recommendation.
In her essay, Carter wrote about growing up in northern Michigan — especially about going out into nature with her mom, who used to work as an arborist at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
“She worked on trails," Carter said. "So I was out here a lot when I was a kid. I still love coming out here,” she said.
Now, Carter's mom and dad are joining her on her own adventure to Isle Royale.
“Isle Royale has been on their hiking and camping bucket list their entire lives, and they haven't gotten a chance to go," she said. "I'm really excited that I was able to be the one to get them there.”
But it’s not just a vacation. Technically, she’ll be putting them to work.
“They're written in as 'artist assistants' to be able to go, which is kind of hilarious,” she said.
She’ll be there for a week, until the end of July, with one other high school artist from Texas and the winner of the competition for adults, too.
When she graduates high school next spring, Carter wants to go to Northern Michigan University in Marquette to study to be an art teacher.
“My art teacher likes to joke that I'm planning to steal his job.”
Find work from Isle Royale's previous artists-in-residence here.
