Grand Marais Art Colony has built each season around a new annual theme since 2020. For 2026, that theme was PLAY, an idea that needed to stretch across classes, exhibitions, publications and promotions while still allowing the artists and their work to lead.

The visual concept treats play as a way of making rather than a single aesthetic. Built around curiosity, experimentation and the freedom to try something unexpected, the identity creates a loose framework where elements can shift, overlap, move and change from piece to piece.

That flexibility became the connective tissue for the season. Across print, digital and promotional materials, each application takes on its own sense of movement and discovery while still belonging to the same larger system, giving PLAY room to behave differently wherever it appears.

Completed at Hillside Studio