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Michael Letts (Art and Design) is a featured artist in the book, Art of the Sleeping Bear Dunes: Transforming Nature into Art.  The large-format, hardcover edition includes a selection of 108 works juried from more than 250 submissions. All were inspired by the landscape of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore of Michigan. The book was published this fall by the Leelanau Press. An exhibition of works featured in its pages opened this month at the Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City.

“I began developing a series of paintings inspired by the dunes when I was an artist in residence for the Glen Arbor Art Association at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in the summer of 2011,” Letts said. “From this series of work, the large acrylic painting ‘Sleeping Bear 3’ was selected for inclusion in the book.”

Jurors were Mary McNichols, professor of art history at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, and E. W. Ross, an internationally known artist and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The book also includes an essay by Jerry Dennis, whose writing has been published in The New York Times, Smithsonian, Audubon, Orion and elsewhere.

The book is available at the Dennos Museum store. Letts’ work can be viewed at his website