Starting Where I Am, Using What I Know, Doing What I Love and Interests
There was a teacher shortage in Michigan in 1968 when I graduated from Hope college, Holland, MI. My sociology major /art minor went on hold while I responded to the need for an art teacher. "I can do that!" I was hired the day before school started even without a teaching certificate. So began what came to be my 25 year career as an art teacher at Grand Haven Junior High.
Teaching art requires a variety of skills and knowledge about drawing, painting, sculpture, textile processes, ceramics, printmaking and much more. At the beginning I improvised and invented lessons, and learned skills and techniques along the way, building a vast repertoire. Sometimes a concept from my own studio work was simplified and streamlined for the classroom. Sometimes a class project inspired a more complex interpretation to pursue in my own work for the many gallery opportunities I had during that time.
From my extensive travel experiences, I gathered stories and artifacts about the world of artists and their work. My students and I became aware of our place in the procession of creative people throughout the ages and the world.
Being involved with creative people doing creative activities offered me daily surprises and inspiration during all 25 years of my accidental teaching career.
My Journey
"I started making a blouse, and it became a canoe."
I laughed when I read that quote but then realized I relate to that.
At the beginning of my art making, if there is a preconceived idea in mind, it may, even probably, will change completely before I finish.
"Making art puts me in a ZONE. That zone is where my materials and I are on a journey together—destination unknown or sometimes only vaguely planned. My focus is on the moment, on the brush or pencil stroke, or the thread passing through fabric, or the paint seeping into folds of crushed paper. I'm on a fascinating journey."
The work itself leads me in directions I don't seem to consciously choose. I trust that I'll recognize my arrival at the final destination of a finished work.
My Inspiration
Early childhood family travels from Indiana to the West brought me face-to-face with dramatic landscapes in formations and colors that amazed me.
"I couldn't believe my eyes! Rusty orange cliffs and lavender dirt!"
The amazing landscapes and their primeval processes were home to ancient cultures whose ruins added to the mystery and wonder. All of this had a profound and lasting influence on my art. In the studio, intuitive decisions about lines, shapes, and colors come from that vast subconscious resource of travel in the West. My media are layered, scrubbed, and overpainted just as sedimentary rocks were layered and eroded by ancient oceans and scoured into fantastic forms.
Remembered images of canyon walls and ancient ruins inspire my abstract composition.
