Resume
Born in Chicago, I completed my BFA at the University of Illinois, also spending a year in Paris at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, followed by a term at the Art Institute of Chicago. With a Max Beckmann graduate fellowship to the Brooklyn Museum in hand, I spent a year New York before returning to the University of Illinois in the MFA program in painting and printmaking.
I then immigrated to Canada in 1971 to teach painting and printmaking at the University of Ottawa. I taught until there until 1984. I also taught printmaking at the Ottawa School of Art in its early days from 1979 to 1981. I then moved to Brock University in the Niagara Peninsula where I was the first tenure track hire in visual arts. This meant that I was able to design the program. I taught the Honours Studio as well as advanced painting and drawing. I retired in 2016 as Professor Emerita.
I was fortunate to work with Leslie Reid and Evergon in the early seventies, setting up the printmaking studios at the University of Ottawa. I taught etching, screen printing, drawing, among other courses. Printmaking, especially etching, has been central to my work, but as you know printmaking requires a great deal of specialized equipment. Painting is less complicated and I have probably done as many of them as I have done of prints.
At Brock University I had no printmaking studio, but it was very high on the Dean’s list of the things to come. Unfortunately, that never happened due to the lack of money and space. This is of course a common problem for schools. So, I borrowed Brock’s press and bought photo trays baths for acid, which the Chemistry Department supplied and I set up my own rudimentary printmaking studio, but I mostly painted. I continued work on a series of fiber glassed three-dimensional flying carpet paintings that I had started in Ottawa, one of which is in the City of Ottawa collection, one in the Canada Council Art Bank, one in Murray Koffler’s collection in Israel, and three in the Rodman Hall collection.
In 2003 I was one of six international artists chosen to go to Nagasawa on the island of Awaji in Japan to learn traditional woodblock, Mokuhanga. This program was made up of three parts, carving, printing, and papermaking. We lived and worked in the old traditional manner at tables eighteen inches off the floor and on our knees. We lived in a traditional house and slept on the tatami mats on the floor. Previously, I had done a large series of prints and paintings of Kimonos because their patterned fabrics so attracted me. This was an incredible journey. I was able to produce a small body of work. The program arranged for our works to be framed and sent to Museum of Fine Arts in Kobe, as well as to Nagasawa and Tsuna for exhibition. We have subsequently shown together in Berlin and in Bristol, UK at the International Printmakers conference.
On a six-month sabbatical in 2009, I was invited as an international artist in residence to Graphic Studio Dublin (graphicstudiodublin.com) in Ireland. As part of the Irish diaspora, I heard many stories from my grandfather and father about Ireland and because of my interest in migration, it seemed like the perfect place to go on my sabbatical. GSD is one of the premier fine print studios in Europe and at sixty years old, the oldest in Ireland. After that first six months I decided to apply for membership. An arms length jury approved my request. Every year for the past eleven, I have spent anywhere from three to six months working there. It is possible to make all manner of prints one can conjure as there are four floors with every kind of press and piece of equipment imaginable. It is a candy store or printmakers. The Printmakers Gallery, So Fine Art Editions, and Graphic Studio Gallery represent my work in Dublin.
My practice focuses on the use of poetic devices where visual metaphors are used primarily to enhance meaning. I am interested in memory and history and its narrative possibilities. Cultural artifacts and especially pattern, as seen in kimonos, carpets, checkerboards or Celtic knots are often intermixed just as is our DNA. For many years and as an immigrant myself, I have been interested in these global memes as signals to ideas of migration / immigration / emigration. The cosmos, maps, ships, birds, fish, and various migratory signs are often depicted in the work as well.
Major bodies of work have included; Literary and Political Portraits (prints), Pekoe Delights (prints), Kimonos (paintings and prints), Magic Flying Carpets (paintings, sculptures, prints), Birds (prints), Fish (prints), The Cosmos (paintings and prints), The Rising (paintings and prints), to name some.
In 2016 on the centenary of the Irish Rebellion, the seminal event in modern Irish history and the formation of the Irish Republic, I had an exhibition, “Fragments, Metaphors, and Smithereens”, which was opened by Kevin Vickers, the Canadian Ambassador to Ireland.
Works from that exhibition were purchased by the Office of Public Works and were shown in the exhibition NATION: Portraits from the State Collection, 1916-2016 at Farmleigh Gallery, the State House, and at The Casino, Hyde Bridge Gallery in Sligo, and The Atrium, Head Office of Public Works, in Trim, County Meath. Some of the prints were also shown in the National Print competition in Clones, County Monaghan. In addition, the Taoiseach, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has one of the prints in his office as well as the Canadian Ambassador.
I am the recipient of numerous grants, which include the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Humanities Research Institute, as well as those from private institutions. I have been on Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada juries, including the inaugural SSHRC Research/Creation jury in 2010, Canada Council purchasing jury in the Atlantic provinces and Ontario Arts Council works on paper juries. My work is represented in over 30 public collections and been exhibited in Canada, Japan, Ireland, USA, Yugoslavia, Poland, England, France, Germany, Korea, China, Malaysia, Israel, Spain, among and Estonia. I’m not sure how many of my works are in the Art Bank, but there are quite a few.
In addition, I have presented numerous conference papers, including a couple at the Universities Art Association; Status of Women conferences; Impact International Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking conference; Discover Print 19, The Gallery at Green Acres, County Wexford; River Brink, The Weir Gallery, Niagara on the Lake; Rodman Hall National Exhibition Centre, St. Catharines, Brock University; Center for the Science of Human Endeavors, Tokyo; for example.
My thesis exhibition was in 1967 and I have been exhibiting ever since. I have not had many solo exhibitions, but there are far too many group-shows to list. I believe they fill 13 single spaced pages in my CV.