Beginnings,
Including
Writing
Fiction
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| My art has grown
out of a childhood of doodling, scrap
booking before scrap booking was commercialized, making
instead of
buying
presents, journaling, and daydreaming.
It
was sidetracked at first by regimen and purported
constructive
criticism and later by the society-sanctioned
practicalities of raising
a
family and developing a mind-numbing career. Nevertheless
I
doggedly
pursued the art of the written
word
during this
time writing short stories and two novels.
Under
the
pseudonym
Katherine Snow I published some of the
stories in Minnesota
Monthly, Architrave, A Woman's Place,
and Gypsy
Cab. I
have also won local (Minnesota) awards for my writing: second place in Minnesota
Monthly's first
Tamarack competition (short story), second place in
the second annual
White
Bear Arts Council Literary Competition (short story),
and Whittier
Writers'
Workshop greeting card contest (poetry).
I
am
currently
looking for a small press publisher
for my
novel Through
a Mirror Dimly and considering self publishing
using my own
handmade covers. (This will doubtless be a very
limited edition.) |
Journaling
to
Journals
|
| As my children
left home and founded lives of their own I
also began doing book art. This
interest
arose simply from a need for more journals for myself; I
had run
through my
favorites from bookstores and Target.
I
began by decorating the outsides of notebooks with
things I couldn't
quite
throw away—the deed to my first car, notes from friends,
scraps of
ribbon and
lace. I progressed to
gutting discarded
books with titles that struck me—The Ruined City,
Death's
Old Sweet
Song, Needful Things—filling them with
blank pages, and
embellishing
the covers. Sometimes I cut
away parts of
the cover or sections of pages making a "hole" in the
journal.
Then I could glue in a 3-dimensional item or a picture
that I wanted to
see for several pages while I wrote.
Eventually
I
made
books
also
out of other
recycled materials such as upholstery and wallpaper
samples,
handkerchiefs,
diskettes, CDs, old photographs, and birch bark. |
And
Other
Visual
Arts
|
While I was
gathering my courage to risk an early retirement
from my regularly paying career, I began taking visual
art classes in
drawing
and watercolor. And I now
enjoy soft
pastel drawing and watercolor sketching in addition to
making journals
and
artist's books. I have begun adding visual
elements to my
journaling, which I find just the thing to express some
moods and
occasions.
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Venues
and
Products
|
In 2007 I
decided to share my work more broadly and to offer
some of it for sale. I
began with
journals at the Chickadee Boutique in Shoreview and have
since sold at
several boutiques and art fairs in Minnesota, Wisconsin,
and
Iowa. Near the end of 2008
I began
offering framed soft pastel
drawings and watercolor sketches, expanding these to
cards in 2009 many
of which include my own poetic phrases. In 2011 I
am introducing
essential journals, scaled down hardcover journals which
I am able to
offer at a lower price point, and journals made from
game boards.
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