Up North Blog

Inspired By Cherries

About to enter her fourth year as a nursing student at Indiana University, Kaarin Herendeen is one busy young woman.

In addition to her intense studies, she has spent the last three summers at her family’s place on Big Glen Lake while working at Cherry Republic’s Glen Arbor campus — at The Great Hall, in The Winery, and at the Cherry Public House. And it was while at Cherry Republic that she was inspired to use the artistic skills she learned as a child (“I did art for fun when I was little,” she shares) to paint some of the Republic’s most iconic images, including Boomer Bear and the famous trunk of Bob Sutherland’s little red car that started it all in 1989.

“I still like to do art in my free time,” Kaarin says, “and I found some plain shirts at the Goodwill Inn and decided to try some acrylic paints on them.” Her spot-on likenesses have garnered lots of attention around the campus, but for now Kaarin just paints them for friends and family. Her real artistic passion is capturing people, drawing on the skills she learned in her anatomy and physiology classes at IU.

Follow her on Instagram at Kaarin_Herendeen to see more of her work.

%d bloggers like this: