Glenn Wolff
Glenn Wolff grew up in Traverse City, Michigan. He studied Printmaking at Northwestern Michigan College and received his BFA in Intermedia from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. His professional career began in New York City as an illustrator for the New York Times, Village Voice, the Central Park Conservancy, the New York Zoological Society, and numerous book publishers.
In 1987 he returned to Northern Michigan and since that time has concentrated on fine art, book illustration, music, and frequent collaborations with environmental organizations. His illustrations have often appeared in the books of Jerry Dennis including “It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes” and most recently “Up North in Michigan”. He was also on the art faculty of Northwestern Michigan College from 2013 to 2024. His artwork is represented by Twisted Fish Gallery in Elk Rapids, MI.
One of Seven
Up North Seasons
The Autumn Leaves
Cranes in the Moonlight
Kiting
Astral Months
Rows One Through Nine
How long have you lived in the Traverse City region? What brought you here? What keeps you here?
I was born in 1953 in Detroit and my parents moved to TC in 1955, so I am almost a local. My dad worked as a salesman for a steel company and was transferred here and assigned northern Michigan as his territory.
The land, the water, the community, and the work as an independent artist, illustrator, and art instructor (recently retired from NMC). Sidebar: I grew up in Traverse City. I moved to New York after graduating from art school in Minneapolis and began a career as an illustrator for clients like the New York Times, the New York Zoological Society, and the Central Park Conservancy. But after almost 10 years in NYC and with a kid ready for school my wife and I decided it was time for a change and moved back to Traverse City. I didn’t expect that my illustration clients would keep using me but they did, we stayed, and raise our family.
How does your art practice connect you to the community or vice versa?
I get to collaborate with an amazing array of artists, writers, and musicians. And I have gotten to work with incredible organizations like TART, the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy, Wings of Wonder, Inland Seas, The TC Film Festival, and (this will date me) the Watershed Suite Project.
What is an underappreciated aspect of our region?
Our growing cultural diversity.
Tell us about your process for one of these works.
“Listen” is a hand colored wood engraving for a limited edition small press poetry book from Deep Wood Press by author Jerry Dennis. A wood engraving is a relief print of an image carved into an end-grain wood block with a tool called a burin. Ink is rolled onto the surface with a brayer and can be transferred onto paper on a press or by hand. This artist’s proof was printed by hand using a glass barren to rub the paper that has been mounted on the block. It was hand tinted with watercolor. The block will be mounted on a letterpress when it is printed in the book “Mornings at Jackpine” to be released in January of 2026.
Do you have any local art crushes?
(Not sure about that word crush:) But I am a huge fan of the amazingly prolific Charlevoix painter Nancy Adams Nash and the Newbery Medal winning Suttons Bay children’s book illustrator Lynne Rae Perkins. My good friend and sometimes collaborator Rufus Snoddy continues to inspire me. I am extremely proud of my former NMC students now working and exhibiting in the area: Kat Kline, Logan Hudson, and Molly Tank.