Biography
Upon my graduation with a BFA, one professor informed me that my career as an artist was doomed because I was moving with my family to Jeffrey City, a uranium mining town on the downward slide in the middle of Wyoming. Instead, I found new meaning as an artist, rooted in the desire to understand the place to which I relocated with my three children and Game Warden husband. Now I realize this laid the foundation for how I respond to place.
My mixed media work investigates visual nuances, focusing on details that provide a basis for understanding and responding to specific places and experiences, especially those informed by nature.
I love exploring on my own or with my husband: floating rivers, investigating back roads, crisscrossing the country in search of new sights and sites. Or I work as part of the artist group known as Sequencing, which includes photographer Susan Moldenhauer and dancer/choreographer Margaret Wilson. Additionally, I am a co-founder and member of the artists’ groups Pipeline Art Project (Pumping art from the energy state of Wyoming), and Laramie Artists Project.
A recipient of a Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award in 2020, I have also received a Wyoming Arts Council’s Visual Art Fellowship Award (2019) and Honorable Mention Award (2017), multiple Individual Artist grants for artistic research and travel, and artist residency opportunities. My artwork is in the collections of the Wyoming State Museum; Albertson College of Idaho; University of Wyoming Law School, College of Health Sciences and Coe Library; Stony Brook School, NY and other public and private collections.
Now working full-time in my studio, I have been a cultural administrator, arts educator, arts advocate, community arts leader, grants writer and fundraiser, recreation director, floral designer, grocery clerk, substitute teacher and family wrangler. I’ve moved 30+ times, making home in some stimulating and isolated places, including a ranch in the foothills of northern Colorado, a frontier town in the Peace River country of Alberta, Canada, and a disappearing uranium mining community in central Wyoming. I currently work and live in Laramie, Wyoming.
I attained an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College in 1996, and a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Wyoming in 1984.