This website is a memoir told through my art.
Creating art in nature is my love. I am fueled by its wild energy and beauty. Nature is my starting point, as it offers infinite colors, shapes, lines, compositions, and relationships. My intention is not to paint exactly what I see. I paint abstractly because I like the looseness and gestural strokes of color. This is what allows for a direct response to being immersed in nature. The painting takes off from there. I don’t know what will happen. I follow it.
There is a certain magic in creating art. I draw, and my hand unearths images I didn’t know about. This is wonderfully surprising and increases my understanding of life. At times, I’m in touch with something bigger than myself that is channelled through me.
The body and nature are a primary focus of my work. This includes: bodies of humans, animals, insects, plants, water, rocks – the whole body of earth. We are all connected. We are nature and we belong to Mother Earth.
My work falls into three categories: Current/Other Work is many different series. Body/Mind – Theme for 40 Years, is an exploration of both the beauty of all life being connected and the ugliness of how disconnection from our bodies and nature causes immense suffering from personal to global. Art for Social Change is on the spiritual and social issues of racism, poverty, and destruction of the earth.
I began making art in high school and have a degree in Art from U of MN with a focus on drawing and painting. In 1980 I stopped in at Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater (HOBT) and stayed for 5 years. I wanted to make Art for Social Change. I found my tribe and puppet theater was perfect. Besides visual art, it adds movement, words, and music, giving more ways to tell the whole story. Yet, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
After leaving HOBT, I created my own shows and worked with others. From 1980 – 2013, 33 years, I was a performing artist in Puppet and Mask Theater and European Clown. I loved creating work with others.
Much of the Puppet and Mask Theater was on Racism, including creating an organization called Puppets Against Racism (PAR) and on separation and connection of Body/MInd.
The clown work started with 4 women. We called ourselves the Puff Family Clowns, rehearsing once a week for 3 years. Next I created a clown character named Aunt Alpha who played opposite Margo McCreary’s puppet, Jack the dog in a number of shows with the theme of Body/Mind.
Details of this work are in Body/Mind and Art for Social Change.
I have always wanted my art to help save the world. I hope you are nourished by it. I certainly am by making it.
Grants
from Jerome Foundation, Headwaters, and the State Arts Board.
Education
- Art Support Group 4/2018- present
Annual Art Retreat in Mexico 2011 – present - Annual Art Camp, St. Croix Park 2008 – present
- Mentor Elizabeth Erickson 2013- present
- Grand Marais Workshop, Elizabeth Erickson 2015
- Women’s ART Institute 2013
- Clown Workshop week 1986
- Heart of the Beast Theater 1980 – 85
- Rebecca Rice, Theater for Social Change, Foot of the Mountain Theater, 1987 -89
- BA in Art and Sociology, University of Minnesota 1969
Exhibits
Grain Belt Brewery Gallery, Walker Church, College of St. Catherine, Macalester College, Wellstone’s Office, Rifle Sport Alternative Art Gallery, Studio Series, Heart of the Beast Katherine Nash Gallery, Riverside Cafe, WARM Gallery, Mpls,
Performance
Banana Story: the Nicaraguan Revolution, American Pie: how Racism started in the US, Nasal Passage, Aunt Alpha Come Home, Bodyless Head, Puppet Lab – In the Heart of the Beast Theater, Women Who Run With Puppets- Southern Theater, Studio Series- Heart of the Beast, Patrick’s Cabaret, HOBT Illuminations – Women’s Spirituality -College of St. Catherine, Standing on Fishes, collaborative mask theater on deep ecology, Mpls and East Coast tour, Flying Crooked, Whittier Community Play, Allegiance: an exploration of racism as experienced by White Americans, At the Foot of the Mountain Theatre, Puppet Festival in Sweden and Denmark with Heart of the Beast, Circle of Water Circus, 6 month project, toured Mississipi River from Bemidji to New Orleans
