About
“The journey is your goal and your work is your path” Lao-Tzu
Artist Statement
There are two ideas behind my art.
One is to have a connection to the everyday natural world around me, and yet to transcend the everyday. I am interested in art as practice, as a way to learn to “pay attention.” But I want my work to be more than what nature looks like, I want it to be an expression of the energy and animation of nature with an acknowledgement of both the light and the darkness.
The second idea is working with ‘place’, using art as a way to connect to where I live. Many years ago I read an essay titled “The Sense of Place” by Wallace Stegner. In it he summarized the writer and philosopher Wendell Berry’s ideas about the importance of place with this sentence: “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are”(italics mine). I have taken that thought as my working credo ever since. Focusing my art on my immediate surroundings is a way of keeping a sense of myself as well as furthering my connection to the place I live.
Bio
I am an artist living in northern Wisconsin near Lake Superior.
My first degree was in sociology with a library science minor but early interests in photography and textiles led me back to school, knowing only that I wanted a way to connect with the natural world around me. While studying art at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Stout my interests turned to painting and drawing and I received another undergraduate degree. I then went on to graduate school and received a MFA degree in painting from the Univ. of Iowa. This led to a career formed by art.
The next twenty years were filled with studio work and exhibiting opportunities supported by a position as visual resources librarian and adjunct instructor at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Stout (Menomonie, WI). I am a Bush Artist Fellow (Bush Foundation, St. Paul, MN), have received two project grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board, and participated in two Wisconsin Triennials along with many solo and small group invitational exhibits in commercial galleries, non-profit art spaces and museums. I have curated group exhibits, been part of regional art conference panels, and have been awarded a number of artist residencies.
Upon retirement from the university, I moved north with my husband where my subject matter is all around me. My art has come full circle and again focuses on black and white photography.
