Archive for February 24th, 2009

Welcome!

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Welcome!

First of all, however you got here, thanks for reading. 

I thought I might start this adventure with an introduction. 

I am a Chicago area artist.   Well, almost Wisconsin.  I live up near the border, and I work primarily in fiber. 

I began my rambling artistic journey in music.  I studied vocal techniques for ages and ages.  It took years, but I finally got the nerve to sing in front of actual people and had a couple year stint singing blues in a bar band.  Yes, ironically, we were an all whitebread suburban  band singing blues in Chicago.   It’s a wonder we got booked. 

band

God Bless the early 90’s!  I still have pretty big hair. 

I think I could get about one leg into that dress now. 
‘
I moved on to the visual arts by working in metals and ceramics.  Questioning the wisdom and social attractiveness of being dirty all the time from throwing clay (ceramics) and lighting noxious chemicals on fire and breathing them in (metalwork), I decided to fall in  love with fiber.   Besides, I liked all the pretty colors.  
I actually went back to school around that time for a couple of completely unrelated degrees in speech pathology and started working with people with autism and behavior disorders.   I fit in art when I could at home and tortured my students with lots of craft projects at school.  Clearly, I needed more art time. 
With the much appreciated support of my darling spouse, I started doing all this full time.  As an aside, he wants all my pieces to have a little “SBK” (sponsored by Ken) logo on them.  (I hope he is not holding his breath on that one.) 
Whatever medium I have worked in, my work has always centered on aspects of the natural and historical world: plants, animals, maps. ancient drawings and languages.  I went through a big “seed pod” phase in ceramics-there are lots of big nut-like objects around the house now (see below)   
Ceramic nut thing

Ceramic nut thing

I occasionally pine for my past media and break out the nasty chemicals or the blow torch to combine other techniques with my fiber pieces.

 

Lascaux series III-Horses

Lascaux series III-Horses

Those are etched copper panels below depicting horses from French cave paintings. Viola!

And here is a completely unrelated plug of my latest work that I wasn’t sure how to tie in:

Herons

Herons

Well, that was a rather ungainly transition in to the present.  I know I kind of fizzled out there, but I suddenly ran out of personal art  history.  I am sure my future posts about my current art escapades will be much more fascinating.

This blog journey will focus mostly on artistic inspiration and techniques.  This means you will probably get a scary glimpse into my brain through the pictures I take.   I also have an as yet unnamed fiber art working group starting that I plan to exploit for material and photos to post.  It’s sure to be a thrilling adventure.   I hope you’ll come along.

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Posted in Inspiration, Metal etching, Mixed Media, Newest Work, Shameless Self Promotion, Uncategorized | 18 Comments »