Michigan Water Color Society to showcase signature members’ work in Ann Arbor exhibition

This story is part of a series about arts and culture in Washtenaw County. It is made possible by the Ann Arbor Art Center, Destination Ann Arbor, Larry and Lucie Nisson, the University of Michigan Arts Initiative, and the University Musical Society.

The Michigan Water Color Society (MWCS) will showcase its members’ work in Ann Arbor for the first time in decades in an upcoming exhibition at the Ann Arbor Art Center (A2AC).

The exhibition runs April 10-May 26 with an opening reception from 6-8 p.m. on April 17 at the A2AC, 117 W. Liberty St. in Ann Arbor.

The show will be the fourth by the MWCS’ signature members, defined as those who have shown their work in four or more juried exhibitions within the past 10 years. It will include about 40 paintings from 33 of the MWCS’ 83 signature members, whom MWCS President Emeritus Rocco Pisto describes as “the best of the best within the state of Michigan.”

Pisto, who studied painting at Eastern Michigan University and is now based just outside Ann Arbor, has been involved with the MWCS since the ’70s (aside from a brief sojourn when he left the area for work-related reasons). He’s been on the MWCS board for the last 11 years and served as president for five.

Pisto created the organization’s “signature membership” in 2021 during his tenure as MWCS president. Pisto thought the MWCS needed to offer members an option for “elite status.” 

“I don’t know why they hadn’t done it earlier,” he says. “Sometimes egos get in the way.”

Mid-pandemic, Pisto says his “goal was to make sure [the MCWS] didn’t lose people [who] just lost interest,” since MCWS members were unable to meet at that time in person. Pursuing signature status “encourages people to enter the show[s], to volunteer their time, [and] to keep the organization alive,” he says. Pisto says it had the added allure of offering members “another feather in your cap.”

“It carries some prestige,” he says.

The MWCS was established in 1946 by a group of artists employed by a few Detroit-based advertising agencies, the Detroit Institute of Art, members of the Scarab Club, and professors from Wayne State and the University of Michigan. At that time, Pisto says, “oil [paint] was king,” and artists who painted in watercolor needed to carve out a space for themselves.

The MWCS now has about 200 members, many based in the Metro Detroit area, according to Pisto.

Pisto himself describes his interest in watercolor (“specifically, abstract watercolor”) as a “lifelong passion.”

“I love the spontaneity of watercolor,” he says.

Pisto says adding paint to watercolor paper, which is multilayered, “tends to push the color. It tends to stain the paper. It creates all these organic things that you really can’t paint [intentionally].”

Plus, he says, “watercolor is built on transparency — layer on top of layer on top of layer, creating depth. For me, that’s key.”

Of course, you can create depth with oil or even acrylic paint, “but it’s just not the same,” Pisto says.

The A2AC exhibition will include work by those who have been painting for decades, including Pisto himself. He says to look out for the sheer variety of techniques used — and “how many different ways watercolor is used to create the effects the artist is trying to accomplish.”

Art styles will “range from everything from representational to abstract and everything in between,” Pisto says. “So it’s kind of an exciting show.”’

More information about the show is available here.