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For over fifty years I have been a working\/exhibiting artist using my hands as my primary tools.\u00a0 You might call the work a kind of slow improvisation.\u00a0 Rather than seeing a totally finished piece in my mind, it unfolds under my hands during the process of making.<\/p>\n
I grew up in the town of Turtle Lake – population 600, in rural Wisconsin. There were no art classes in the public school, and the first drawing I remember making was in first grade – a Cannibal with a strategically placed palm leaf. My first teaching job was at Hastings College in Hastings Nebraska, where I met my husband to be, Karl Gartung.\u00a0 We moved to Milwaukee in 1975; where I taught at UWM for three years, but did not receive tenure. In 1979, Karl and I cofounded Woodland Pattern Literary Center, and for years, like many other artists, I led a double life:\u00a0 Executive Director of Woodland Pattern by day and visual artist by night.\u00a0 Throughout the almost forty years at\u00a0 W. P. my personal work became informed by professional work: text as well as image revealing narratives.\u00a0 Trivial activities became art practice.\u00a0 After retiring in 2018, I now spend each day in my studio finishing a a major piece begun September 2,1996; an entire deer hide covered with beaded\u00a0 journal entires, drawings, and hand written poems by writers visiting Woodland Pattern.\u00a0 It will be completed by this September and available for viewing (at MIAD) as part of the Woodland Exhibition Anniversary Celebration opening in early October, 2022.\u00a0 Art has not been an extension of my life – it is my life.\u00a0 It is my way to deal with daily occurrences – whether they end up as objects on display or conceptual explorations.<\/p>\n