Niles Artist Steve Sult Selected for Two National Juried Exhibitions
Michigan mixed-media artist continues an expanding exhibition year with work exploring change, memory, loss, and the human experience.
NILES, Michigan – Niles-based contemporary mixed-media artist Steve Sult has had work selected for two national juried exhibitions this fall, continuing a year of growing recognition for work exploring memory, change, caregiving, loss, and social consciousness.
Sult's work will appear in NEW/NOW: Pondering Change, a National Juried Exhibition at the South Haven Center for the Arts in South Haven, Michigan. The exhibition opens with a reception Friday, September 25, from 5-7 p.m. and will be on view September 26 through November 7, 2026.
The exhibition examines change as a fundamental part of human experience and how it alters, challenges, and transforms people. For Sult, the theme resonates in particular. Much of his recent work has emerged from the experience of caring for and losing his wife after more than five decades together.
Sult's work will also be exhibited in the 10th Annual Center for Contemporary Arts National Juried Art Exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene, Texas. The exhibition opens Saturday, October 10, 2026, with a special VIP reception from 5-7:30 p.m. and continues through November 21.
The Abilene exhibition is a national juried competition bringing together artists working across a broad range of media from throughout the United States.
The two exhibitions continue an active period for Sult, whose recent work has also appeared in regional and international exhibitions. His work was featured in the CARE exhibition at the South Haven Center for the Arts and the 37th Annual Art and Social Justice Exhibition at South Bend's Colfax Cultural Center, where his work received a juror's award. His work has also been selected for international exhibition.
An Evolving Body of Work
Sult's recent work marks an increasingly personal direction in a career shaped by more than four decades as a visual communicator, graphic designer and illustrator.
Working across mixed media, watercolor, oil, ink, collage and digital processes, he creates layered visual narratives that often begin with lived experience but move beyond autobiography. Recent works address caregiving and grief, addiction and recovery, social justice, human connection, and the sometimes difficult process of adapting to change.
A significant group of these works has developed from Sult's experience during the illness and death of his wife, Terry. Rather than treating grief simply as an ending, the work considers what happens to love, identity, and memory as one person is gradually forced to let another go.
The resulting imagery moves between representation and abstraction–figures emerge and disappear, lines intersect and separate, and fragments of color suggest memory, presence, and absence.
"The work has become a way of looking at things I couldn't necessarily explain in words,Sult says. I'm less interested in telling the viewer what to think than creating enough space for them to bring something of their own experience to it."
About the Artist
Steve Sult is a Niles, Michigan–based contemporary mixed-media artist. Sult combines traditional art-making with contemporary digital processes, allowing drawing, painting, photography, collage, and digital manipulation to coexist within a single work. Sult creates layered visual narratives that invite viewers to slow down, look closely, and discover meaning beneath the surface. His approach reflects a philosophy that has increasingly defined his practice: "The tools are digital, the choices are mine. The feelings are human."
For Sult, technology is not the author of the work but another instrument in the studio. The decisions–what to reveal, obscure, emphasize, or remove–remain rooted in the artist's hand, judgement, and experience.
Sult has devoted his artistic practice to creating work that reflects a belief that art has the power to foster empathy, conversation, and connection. His work has been exhibited in regional galleries, cultural institutions, national juried exhibitions, and international exhibitions.
Upcoming Exhibitions
New/Now: Pondering Change
National Juried Art Exhibition
South Haven Center for the Arts
South Haven, Michigan
September 26-November 7, 2026
Opening Reception:
September 25, 5-7 p.m.
10th Annual Center for Contemporary Arts
National Juried Art Exhibition
Center for Contemporary Arts
Abilene, Texas
October 10-November 21, 2026
Grand Opening VIP Reception: October 10, 5-7:30 p.m.
Media Contact
Steve Sult
Sult Mine Creative Group, Inc
269-240-7180
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