For artCentral’s collaborative exhibition SIGNS & WONDERS opening April 1, 2022, the artists are two. They are a couple that is us—my artist husband David and me—married five years. Already you may know our mutual backstory about how, since our courting days, we have shared the inclination to “oou and ah” together at sights that catch our eyes and tweak our fancies on our Sunday morning outings—about how we collect images, capture moments and make sweet memories on our drives together—about how we then go home to make our art in our twinned studios.
From our early childhoods art-making has guided each of us through all the places and phases of our personal journeys until David found me in a magazine and we began to make our life in art together.
Upon leaving his native Joplin, Missouri, David enrolled in the “Foreign Study League”. He earned art history credits in Rome, Florence and Paris: these were transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1973. He returned to Joplin and Missouri Southern State College for a Bachelor of Science in Education. David is a combat naval veteran, having served in the Middle East as well as the Mediterranean, Western Pacific and Arctic Ocean.
While always pursuing artistic endeavors, he has been a semi-professional musician and singer-songwriter performing primarily on guitar or mandolin as well as a few other more exotic instruments. He has appeared in music videos and three major independent films. While continuing his own freelance art career, for fifteen years David owned and operated the Upstart Crow Gallery in the Crossroads District of Kansas City, Missouri. Upon marrying me and moving to Carthage, David became a participating artist and the Gallery Prepitor (Art Handler) for artCentral.
As a very young child I began to write and illustrate stories and to construct houses of sticks and stones. Art making was my passion then and has been ever since. With a BA, Cum Laude, in studio art from Hendrix College, while I raised my two children, I worked as a freelance graphic artist in Dallas, Texas, and Little Rock, Arkansas. Moving my young family to NYC, I attended the Art Students League and General Theological Seminary. For a small Manhattan fashion house I dressed Greenwich Village boutique windows and designed one-of-a-kind originals.
After my nest emptied, I took to the wilderness of the Ozark Highlands. Four years of solitude beside the Little Buffalo River were spent rambling, photographing, gardening and deep diving into the world of spirit. I painted what I found as though writing my journal with a brush. Back in community, I exhibited and marketed my work full time until assuming the role of Executive Director-Curator here at artCentral. Now with David, I still pour my passion into my own art-making as I write her weekly Art Notes and nurture a vibrant creative space where other artists can flourish.
Since David and I both have full time day jobs, David down the road at Ajinomoto, and me at artCentral, for now our personal art-making is limited by hours available. No surprise that creating our SIGNS & WONDERS has spanned four years of Sunday studio afternoons. David and I hope you will come see us and our eighty-eight creations!
For more information visit www.artcentral.org, email [email protected] or call (417) 358-4404.
