Hi, I’m Chris Raymond, the “girl” who met art.

Many years ago, when I was living in the Windy City (home to the country’s best pizza!), I was looking for something new to do for my annual vacation.

A co-worker suggested I look into a painting and drawing class at Oxbow, an art colony on the shores of Lake Michigan run by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I registered and showed up to catch the little yellow school bus one Saturday morning, full of teenagers, and wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.

It turned out that I’d gotten myself in touch with a side of me that I barely knew existed. I learned to start really seeing the world around me. Driving home from the week’s course, a fellow student and I marveled at the beauty of telephone poles and the exquisite colors of gray skies and dried grasses!

Since that time, I have attended an arts colony or crafts school nearly every summer. After moving to the DC area, I have mostly attended the Penland School in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where I’ve taken workshops in monotype printing, screen printing on fabric, jewelry, Polaroid photography, papermaking, encaustic painting, and bookmaking, to name a few.

In my late 30s, I decided to change careers from science journalism to graphic design. After studying at VCU, I’ve been employed as a print and web designer. I enjoy playing pick-up basketball with other “mature” women, dabbling in various artistic media, and surfing the web for visual inspiration of all kinds.