Sally Bowker
medium: painting
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Contact information
Artist resides in: Cornucopia, WI
Email Address: bowkers@uwstout.edu
Artist statement
My goal as an artist is to have a connection to the everyday natural world around me--and yet to transcend the everyday. I am interested in art as practice, as a way to learn to "pay attention." But I want my work to be more than what nature looks like, I want it to be an expression of the energy and animation of nature, the light and darkness, an acknowledgement of both life and death. I want my images to have an energy similar to the life force of nature.
These images represent two concurrent bodies of work. One continues my work with observing and working with nature close around me. The other uses an underlying grid pattern as a structural format for improvisation and is inspired by both ethnic and Amish quilts.
Biography
I received a bachelor of science degree in sociology from UW-Stevens Point in 1967. After being introduced to art as an adult, I returned to school for a BS in studio art from UW-Stout in 1983, and then an MA and MFA from the University of Iowa in 1986 and 1987. Notable exhibits have been the Wisconsin Triennial in 1993 and 1999, and a solo exhibit, "Resort: A North Shore Response," that traveled to five college and museum venues in Minnesota in 1994-95. I received a Bush Artist Fellowship from the Bush Foundation in St. Paul, Minn., in 1992 and before that, two Wisconsin Arts Board Project Grants in 1988 and 1989. I have had residencies at the Ragdale Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts and Oberhoeltzer Foundation.
Currently, I am the Visual Resources Librarian and an adjunct faculty member at UW-Stout and live on a riverbank outside of Menomonie, Wis.