GirlMeetsArt

A hand-built and decorated box holds rubbings from Penland’s grounds.

Despite spending many summers at art colonies or crafts schools in remote wooded locations, I never got much inspiration from nature in doing my art. All the green just did not do much for me.

Then one summer I signed up for a bookmaking class at Penland, taught by Julie Leonard, a book artist with the University of Iowa.I decided to tackle a complex construction project, (more…)

Living high off the hog will get you high cholesterol

The maternal side of my family has bad heart genes.

My mother and nearly all of her seven siblings suffered from premature cardiovascular disease and highly elevated cholesterol levels. My sister died of a heart attack at age 42.

This legacy has influenced me in a lot of ways. (more…)

This paper sculpture represents one of the first pieces of art I did while tapping into personal history. It represents feelings of being wounded and vulnerable following a serious knee injury.

In the early 1980s, while living in Chicago and making my living as a medical writer, I found myself looking for a different way to spend my vacation time. A coworker told me about Oxbow, a summer art colony run by the Art Institute of Chicago.

I had my doubts.

I’d traced comics as a child to make decorations for our windows, but that was the extent of my “artistic” experience. But I decided to take the plunge, despite the wave of second-guessing that swamped me as I stepped onto a yellow school bus with a group of teenagers to make the trek to Oxbow.