A nonprofit art organization promoting art, artists, and land conservation.

Shirley Schanen Gruen (1923-2020) studied art at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the Art Center School in Los Angeles. She taught at Milwaukee Area Technical Schools. In the 1980s she moved her studio to 303 N Franklin Street where Gallery 224 is now located.

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As an artist, Gruen is most well known for her modernist watercolor and acrylic paintings of Port Washington. She also made mosaics in beach glass and pebbles, one of which can be seen on the south exterior wall of this building. Many of her paintings are the result of a multi-step process. In the height of her career she often pieced together images of a location to create a panoramic view, sketched the image on transparent paper and then transferred it to paper, canvas or illustration board where she began the painting.

 

Her artistic process and additional works can be viewed at the Port Washington Historical Society Resource Center, one block south at 205 N Franklin Street.