with nature sing

With Nature Sing is a collection of six mosaics, dedicated on Februday 11, 2018, for permanent display at the Bethel College Mennonite Church in North Newton, Kansas.

The hymn All Creatures of our God and King celebrates the visual beauty, music, and force of the natural world. I chose imagery from this hymn as the basis for my mosaics. The cardinal and honey bee mosaics represent all creatures lifting their voices in song; the sun and moon mosaics illustrate the burning sun with golden beam, and thou silver moon with softer gleam; the tree mosaic shows the rushing wind that art so strong; and the mosaic with the human face in profile visualizes sensory response to the beauty and sound of birds, and appreciation for mother earth, who day by day, unfoldest blessings on our way.

The mosaics remind us of our relationship with mother earth. As we delight in the beauty of birds and honor the necessity of pollinators, we must also live in accordance with them, embracing the sun and wind as vital sources of renewable energy. (Click here for information on my mosaic process.)

Special thanks to Darlene Dick, David Kreider, Bob Regier, and Margo Schrag, members of the Art Committee of Bethel College Mennonite Church who are overseeing the commissioning of new artworks for the church. Recent art installations include works by Bob Regier, John Gaeddert, Conrad Snider, and me.

Peace and Reconciliation by Bob Regier, in the church’s gathering place

Many Gifts, One Spirit byÂ John Gaeddert, in the south entryway

Vessel by Conrad Snider, near the columbarium

With Nature Sing by Lora Jost, in the gathering area

Mosaic Process: With Nature Sing

These photos of my mosaic process are on display at the Bethel College Mennonite Church in North Newton, Kansas, through March of 2018. The photos accompany a recently-installed permanent exhibit of 6 mosaicsÂ titled, With Nature Sing

My Mosaic Process

Making mosaics is a complicated process with moments of magic. Fitting the tiles in place is like putting together a puzzle, except that I create the puzzle pieces as I go along. Although one can buy tiles for mosaic-making or use all manner of things like paper, macaroni, seeds or rocks, I chip my own tiles from secondhand ceramic plates and other dishes that I find in a range of colors and patterns at thrift stores. I have accumulated many dishes over the years, with occasional gifts from friends and acquaintances who sometimes leave their broken dishes on my front porch.

Because I work with dishes that need to be continually broken and shaped, my tile nipper is always close at hand. But before I cut and shape the tiles with my nipper, I use it to break the dishes first with a good solid whack, dividing each into smaller pieces that I can more easily work with. I look for broken pieces that are the right shape and size to fill spaces, and I also cut and clip them to fit more exactly. By the end of a project my work table and floor are covered with tiny discarded bits from this process.

Before the tiling begins, I develop an idea and then make a plan. I play around with images and ideas by drawing in my sketchbook, often little pictures that would only make sense to me, and then I change and expand on these. When I have played around enough and have settled on a concept, I make larger drawings of the key elements at scale, sometimes using reference pictures from my own photos or ones I find in books or on the internet. The last step in the design process is to map the images and key color choices onto a plywood work surface, also called a backer board, with simple outlined shapes in black marker.

I enjoy the creative process more if I leave some design decisions and color choices to resolve in the making process. I have twenty dishpans in my studio filled with dishes in various stages of brokenness, sorted by color, accompanied by smaller containers of smaller pieces that are sorted too, to choose from. I try to create mosaics where the imagery can be read through distinct color-shape areas, and yet I bring color-variation into these areas too, for added interest. Sometimes I sneak other objects into my mosaics to surprise the viewer, among them fossils, rocks, shells, or specialty tiles. My mosaics have become more sophisticated over the years, and yet I continue to learn more and more through the process of making them.

For small wall mosaics like the ones in this exhibition, I work directly on plywood. I scrape and mar the plywood surface first with a screwdriver, and then seal the surface with watered-down Weldbond glue, the same glue that I use to affix the tiles. (For largescale projects on walls or buildings, one would use different materials such as concrete backer board and mortar.)

The final stage is grouting. After I glue all of the tiles into place and the glue has dried, I vacuum the surface to sweep up bits of dust and debris before I begin to apply the grout, a cement-based material used to fill the cracks between the pieces. I use grey or tan grout which contrasts well with a range of colors, but colored pigments are available to mix into the grout, too. It is hard to judge what a mosaic will look like once grouted, so I usually go into the grouting process with some trepidation â€“ how will it turn out? That said, grouting always brings a sense of unity to the work that is often pleasantly surprising. The grout is like magic that helps transform a pile of broken dishes into a pleasing cohesion.

The grout must be removed from the face-surface of the tiles before it dries. Cleaning the tiles is a tactile process because my use of dishes creates an uneven surface, different from mosaics made from uniform commercial tiles. I use my hands and a rubber spatula to remove the bulk of the excess grout from the tiles before I begin wiping away the grout with a damp sponge and rags. The final stages of cleaning remind me of dental work. In fact, I use old dental tools that a friend gave to me to clean the smallest and shallowest pieces that I canâ€™t wipe by hand. Finally, I buff the tiles with Windex, and then the piece is complete.

Click here for more photos of With Nature Sing.

RESUME

LORA JOST, ARTIST

lorajost@hotmail.com

www.lorajost.org, Facebook: Lora Jost, Artist

EDUCATION

1992 M.F.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison

1990 M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison

1988 B.A. Bethel College (North Newton, Kansas)

Additional course work: Wichita State University (Kansas), University of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas), American University (Washington, DC)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Exhibits, Group Exhibits, Teaching, Workshops, Presentations, Awards, Grants, Residencies, Commissions, Illustrations, Murals, Collaborative Community Art Projects, Co-authored Book, Publications, Writing, Press, Professional Organizations, Board Service

EXHIBITS

Media: drawing, scratchboard, clayboard, mosaic, mixed-media collage, installation

Sound the Climate Alarm

2021 Lumberyard Gallery, Baldwin City, Kansas

2020 Middle Gallery, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, Kansas

2019 Carriage Factory Gallery, Newton, Kansas—with Rachel Epp Buller and Emily Schroeder Willis

Animals

2014 Phoenix Gallery Underground, Lawrence, Kansas

Cut, Scratch, Smash, Stack

2013 Lincoln Arts Center, Lincoln, Kansas—with Angela Pickman and Hanna Eastin

Better Angels, Deer and a Boat

2012 Do’s Deluxe, Lawrence, Kansas

Lora Jost at Wheatfields

2011 Wheatfields Bakery and Cafe, Lawrence, Kansas

Scratch, Sprinkle, Cut

2011 Carnegie Cultural Center, Ottawa, Kansas—with Angela Pickman and Azyz Sharafy

Linked in Spirit: An Exhibition of Mixed-media Collages, Scratchboard drawings, and Mosaics

2010 Yost Art Gallery, Highland Community College, Highland, Kansas

2010 The Lawrence Percolator, Lawrence, Kansas

2010 Fine Arts Center Gallery, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas

Two Mothers, Two Sons

2007 Gallery, Lawrence Public Library, Lawrence, Kansas—with Sara Stalling and our sons, ages 5 and 6

The Experience of Farmers (art based on interviews with farmers about their experiences)

2003 Heritage Museum, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

2002 Gallery of Rural Art, The National Agriculture Center, Bonner Springs, Kansas

2002 Babcock Hall, Lawrence, Kansas

2002 Mattie Rhodes Art Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri

2001 Z’s Divine Expresso on 23^rd, Lawrence, Kansas

2001 Lawrence Public Library, Auditorium, Lawrence, Kansas

2001 Peace Connections, Newton, Kansas

2001 Frank Carlson Library, Concordia, Kansas

2001 Lutheran Synod Meeting, Marriott Hotel, Kansas City, Missouri

2001 Cloud County Community College, Concordia, Kansas

2001 Downtown Development Day, State Capital, Topeka, Kansas

2000 Sycamore House Gallery, Harrisonburg, Virginia, 2000 (as a work in progress)

Weathering the Storm: Stories of Perseverance (art based on stories; included installation of coats for distribution)

1999 Hartzler Library Gallery, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Virginia

1998 Historical Building, Glasco, Kansas

1998 Raymond Eastwood Gallery, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, Kansas

Meetings and Other Mysteries

1997 Wheatfields Bakery and Cafe, Lawrence, Kansas

1997 Fine Arts Center Gallery, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas

Meetings

1996 Home Office, Inc., Bloomington, Indiana

1996 Rosemary Miller Gallery, John Waldron Art Center, Bloomington, Indiana

Small in the Hall

1994Arthouse Cafe, Madison, Wisconsin

Picture Your Vote

1992 Pyxis Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin (installation of mail-art)

Fax Art Response

1992 Survival Graphics, Madison, Wisconsin (MFA exhibit, installation of faxed art)

Acts on Paper

1991 Sunprint Cafe and Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin

Conversation and Community

1990 Humanities Building Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Madison (MA exhibit, installation of collaboratively made artwork documenting conversations on the topic of community)

SELECT GROUP EXHIBITS (2012-present)

Media: drawing, scratchboard, clayboard, mosaic, mixed-media collage

2012-2022 Lawrence Arts Center Benefit Auction, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, KS

2020 The Way Home, exhibit at Mennonite Arts Weekend, Pleasant Ridge Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, OH (one of the featured artists)

2019, 2021 Lawrence Art Guild All Members Show, Cider Gallery, Lawrence, KS

2017 12 x 12 National Juried Exhibition, Raymond Eastwood Gallery, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, KS

2017 Crossing the Line, Margaret Martin Gehman Gallery, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA (exhibit accompanied Crossing the Line: Women of Anabaptist Traditions Encounter Borders and Boundaries conference; drawing)

2016 Art-violins Auction, Grace Hill Winery, Whitewater, Kansas (fundraiser, Newton Mid-Kansas Symphony Orchestra; mosaic)

2016 Kansas People’s History Project, Watkins Museum of History, Lawrence, Kansas (poster; one of 20 selected for screen print portfolio). Also at: Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas; Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas; InterUrban Arthouse, Overland Park, Kansas

2015 Terra Verde, NOTO Artsplace, Topeka, Kansas (mixed-media)

2014 Vision of Lawrence: Celebrating 10 Years of Lawrence Magazine, Lawrence Public Library, Lawrence, KS (one of the featured artists)

2014 Are You My Mother, Watson Gallery, Salina, Kansas (Feminist Art Project exhibit; scratchboard)

2013 Postpartum, Erman B. White Gallery, Butler County Community College,

El Dorado, Kansas (Feminist Art Project exhibit; scratchboard)

2013 Working on the Bias, Watson Gallery, Salina, Kansas (Feminist Art Project exhibit; embroidery, applique)

2012 Art Lives, CityArts, Wichita, Kansas (Feminist Art Project exhibit of 2-person collaborations; painting/assemblage with Erika Nelson)

ADDITIONAL GROUP EXHIBITS (1990-present)

Landmark National Bank (Lawrence, KS), Margaret Martin Gehman Gallery (Harrisonburg, VA), Grace Hill Winery (Whitewater, KS), Watkins Museum of History (Lawrence, KS), Bethel College (North Newton, KS), Pittsburg State University (Pittsburg, KS), InterUrban Arthouse (Overland Park, KS), NOTO Artsplace (Topeka, KS), Lawrence Public Library (Lawrence, KS), Watson Gallery (Salina, KS), Erman B. White Gallery (El Dorado, KS), CityArts (Wichita, KS), Cider Gallery (Lawrence, KS), Strecker-Nelson Gallery (Manhattan, Kansas), Whirled Art at Hobbes-Taylor Lofts (Lawrence, Kansas), The Lawrence Percolator (Lawrence, Kansas), 1109 Gallery (Lawrence, Kansas), Ann Evans Gallery and the Raymond Eastwood Gallery, Lawrence Arts Center (includes yearly art auction, Lawrence, Kansas), Lincoln Arts Center (Lincoln, Kansas), Fine Arts Center Gallery, Bethel College (N. Newton, Kansas), Tom Fooleries (Kansas City, Missouri), 500 Locust Gallery (Lawrence, Kansas), Riverfront Gallery (Lawrence, Kansas), National Women’s Music Festival, School of Fine Art Gallery, Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana), Bellevue Cooperative (Bloomington, Indiana), Daisybrain Media Center and Gallery (Bloomington, Indiana), The Pump House (La Crosse, Wisconsin), Porter Butts Gallery (Madison, Wisconsin), Randolph Street Gallery (Chicago, Illinois), Humanities Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, Wisconsin), Texas Union Gallery, University of Texas (Austin, Texas), Walker’s Point Center for the Arts (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

ONLINE GROUP EXHIBITS

2022 Anger Into Art, curated by Kansas City-based artist David Titterington (cover image, drawings)

2021 Art Storm to #StopLine3, sponsored by MN350 (drawing)

2021 Just Imagine, exhibit with the Arts Dismantling Capitalism Symposium, Cooperation Humbolt (drawing)

STUDIO ART SALES

2019 Holiday Studio Sale—with Sara Taliaferro

TEACHING, WORKSHOPS, PRESENTATIONS, TALKS (children, teens, adults, seniors)

1997-2022 Teacher, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, Kansas (classes in sketchbook-journaling, words and pictures together, creative process, collage, imaginative drawing, drawing practice, drawing stories, drawing in black and white)

2021 Artist Talk, “Art, Animals, and Extinction,” Lawrence Hidden Valley Camp (one of three presenters for Girl Scout art camp)

2020 Artist Talk, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, Kansas (artist talk about exhibit)

2019 Artist Talk, Carriage Factory Gallery, Newton, Kansas (artist talk about exhibit)

2020 Presentation, “Scratch, Mark, Break,” Mennonite Arts Weekend Conference, Cincinnati, Ohio

2018 Project Facilitator, Art Cafe, First United Methodist Church (facilitated a mosaic project with youth participants)

2017 Visiting Artist, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas (lecture in Activism, Art and Design class, and hands-on scratchboard workshop in Printmaking class)

2012-13 Facilitator/Teacher for “Art Nights,” Family Promise, Lawrence, Kansas (art classes for homeless children and families)

2010 Facilitator/Teacher, Hands-on Family Art Workshop, Lawrence Percolator, Lawrence, Kansas (family workshop included making mixed-media collages, clayboard drawings, and mosaics)

2008 Facilitator/Teacher, “Family Collage Workshop: Art and Music,” Watkins Community History Museum (family workshop accompanied Smithsonian exhibit “New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music)

2008-2009 Co-facilitator with Sara Stalling, Art and Conversation Group, GaDuGi SafeCenter, Lawrence, Kansas (classes in assemblage and mosaic with survivors of sexual violence)

2002, 2003 Workshop leader, School of Education, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas (lecture and workshop on sketchbook-journaling)

2001 Teacher, East Heights Afterschool Program and the Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, Kansas (drop-in art program and mural making)

2000 Co-facilitator with Jane Wegscheider, Boys and Girls Club, Lawrence, Kansas (mural making)

1998-99 Adjunct Lecturer, Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas (general education art class)

1998 Co-facilitator with Jane Wegscheider, Van Go Mobile Arts, Lawrence, Kansas (art car mural)

1995-96 Facilitator/Teacher, John Waldron Art Center and the Community Kitchen, Bloomington, Indiana (drop-in art program for homeless people)

1994 Teacher, Department of Continuing Education in the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin (collage)

1993-94 Art Specialist, Madison School-Community Recreation Parks and Playgrounds Program, Madison, Wisconsin (led art projects with children at parks and playgrounds in Madison)

1993-94 Teacher, “Expanding Visions in the Arts,” Department of Continuing Education in the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin (collage, video)

1993 Adjunct Lecturer, University of Minnesota Studio Arts Extension and Intermedia Arts Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota (media arts)

AWARDS, GRANTS, RESIDENCIES, SELECT COMMISSIONS

2018 Commission, With Nature Sing, Bethel College Mennonite Church, North Newton, Kansas (six mosaics)

2017, 2013 Selected artist, Banned Book Trading Card Contest, Lawrence Public Library, Lawrence, Kansas (art reproduced on trading cards)

2015 Commission, Night in the Flint Hills, Spellman Brady and Company, St. Louis, Missouri (mosaic)

2014 Phoenix Award, Lawrence, Kansas (Lawrence Cultural Arts Commission award for outstanding artistic achievement, Visual Arts category)

2013 Commission, Almost Spring, Free State Brewery, Lawrence, KS (mosaic mural in restaurant)

2008 Artist in Residence, Glasco: Historic Downtown District Mural, sponsored by City of Glasco (Glasco, Kansas) with a Grassroots Grant from the Kansas Arts Commission (mural project)

2007 Kansas Notable Book Award, Kansas Center for the Book at the State Library of Kansas (for co-authored book Kansas Murals: A Traveler’s Guide)

2004 Silver Award, CASE District VI, Excellence in Fundraising Materials: Fundraising Direct Mail, (illustration for fundraising materials for the University of Kansas)

2001 Artist in Residence, sponsored by the City of Glasco (Glasco, Kansas) with a Grassroots Grant from the Kansas Arts Commission (sketchbook-journaling workshops for children and adults)

1999-2000 Artist in Residence, sponsored by the City of Glasco (Glasco, Kansas) and United Lutheran Ministries (north central Kansas) with a Grassroots Grant from the Kansas Arts Commission, Salina, Kansas (interview component of The Experience of Farmers)

2000 Commission, Cranes, Jack Hope Design-Build, Lawrence, Kansas (mural in business)

2000 Commission, Stories of Triumph, Celebrate!, Women Tell Their Stories Conference, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas (mural with postal art component)

2000 Artist in Residence, New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, New York Mills, Minnesota (sketchbook-journaling workshops in the public schools and interviews/work for The Experience of Farmers)

1999 Selected artist, Kansas Artists Postcard Competition Series XXII, project of the Association of Community Arts Agencies, Salina, Kansas (reproduced postcard)

1999 Artist in Action Grant, Silhouette Festival Calendar, Smoky Hill River Festival, Salina Arts and Humanities Commission, Salina, Kansas (participatory installation for festival)

1998 Artist in Residence, Community in Conversation, sponsored by the Glasco Arts Council (Glasco, Kansas) with a Grassroots Grant from the Kansas Arts Commission (mural project)

1998 Mini-Fellowship, Weathering the Storm, Kansas Arts Commission, Topeka, Kansas (exhibit)

1997 First Place in 2-D Award, Art in the Park, Lawrence Art Guild Juried Art Fair, Lawrence, Kansas

1993 Film in the Cities Regional Film/Video Grant, Minneapolis, Minnesota (collaborative project grant for Video Wedge Project)

1992 Grant, Picture Your Vote, Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission, Madison, Wisconsin (for window installation)

1991-92 Edith L. Gilbertson Scholarship, School of Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

1991-92 Vilas Award Scholarship, The Graduate School, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin

ILLUSTRATION

Packaging illustration

2015 Free State Brewery, Lawrence, Kansas, Front Porch Series six-pack carrier

Editorial illustration (covers, spreads, spots)

Kansas! Magazine, Lawrence Magazine, KU Giving, Kansas Alumni, Oread Engineer, Pitch Weekly, The Mennonite, Bloomington Confidential, Kansas University Endowment Association fund appeal

Posters

2021 Douglas County Newcomers Guide and Parks and Green Spaces LLC

2016 Kansas People’s History Project

2008 River City Reading Festival

Book Cover Illustration

2019 Taking On Life, by Antonio Sanchez Day, Coal City Press (2019)

2012 To the Stars Through Difficulty, ed. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Mammoth Publications (2012)

MURALS (INDIVIDUAL COMMISSIONS AND COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS)

2014 Nearly Spring, Free State Brewery, Lawrence, Kansas (commission)

2008 Glasco: Historic Downtown District, Glasco, Kansas (artist residency)

2001 Langston Hughes Mural, Lawrence High School students, Lawrence, Kansas (co-facilitated mural project with students)

1998, 2000, 2001 Van Go Mobile Arts art car; Boys and Girls Club mural; East Heights Afterschool Program mural (facilitated/co-facilitated projects with children)

2000 Cranes, Jack Hope Design-Build Building, Lawrence, Kansas (commission)

2000 Stories of Triumph, Celebrate!, Women Tell Their Stories Conference, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas (commission)

1998 Community and Conversation, Glasco Kansas (artist residency)

COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY ART PROJECTS (also see TEACHING and RESIDENCIES)

2016 Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change, co-facilitated series of cultural and educational events in Lawrence, Kansas, sponsored by the USDAC-Lawrence Field Office and LETUS (Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability) with the Lawrence Percolator and Haskell Indian Nations University, included:

Exhibit: Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change, Lawrence Percolator (included over 50 artists, poets, musicians, and performers)

Children’s art workshop: Landscape Transformations, Lawrence Public Library (led by the Spencer Museum of Art’s “Art Cart”)

Teen exhibit: Effecting Change, Watkins Museum of History (produced by teen curatorial team Hang12)

Panel discussion: How Can We Work Together on Climate Change, Haskell Indian Nations University (panelists: Saralyn Reece Hardy, Thad Holcombe, Eileen Horn, Jay T. Johnson, Dan Wildcat)

Dance and poetry performance: Mrs. Noah in Poetry and Dance, Lawrence Percolator (poet Elizabeth Schultz and dancer Joan Stone)

Writing Workshop: A Change in the Weather: Writing from Climate Change Art, Lawrence Percolator (led by writer Caryn Mirriam Goldberg and writer/naturalist Ken Lassman)

Community Work Day: Haskell’s First Annual Wetland Restoration Day, Haskell Wetlands (a workday to seed and plant, with community volunteers led by Haskell’s Eco Ambassadors)

2014 Lawrence Climate March Maker/Speaker Party, South Park, Lawrence, Kansas, co-facilitated event sponsored by USDAC-Lawrence Field Office and LETUS (Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability), and Shield the People (a project of the Rosebud Sioux tribe)

2010 Save Our Schools, Lawrence Arts Center, Lawrence, Kansas, co-facilitated this exhibit, an extension of the Save Our Schools exhibit, included art and artifacts from all Lawrence elementary schools

2010 Save Our Schools, Percolator, Lawrence, Kansas, co-facilitated this exhibit of art and artifacts by and about the New York and Cordley Elementary School communities

CO-AUTHORED BOOK, PUBLICATIONS, WRITING

2016 “Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change, A Series of Cultural and Educational Events in Lawrence, Kansas Part I,” USDAC website

2016 “Many Thanks, Part Three of Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change,” USDAC website

2014 “The People’s Climate March Maker/Speaker Party, Lawrence, KS,” USDAC website

2012 Poem, To the Stars Through Difficulty, ed. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg (poem)

2011 “Quagmire in My Son’s Backpack,” Just Moms, Barclay Press (essay)

2007 “Making a Statement for Peace: CJ Brune,” Lawrencian, Lawrence, Kansas (feature article)

2007 “The Kindergarten Boogy-Bunny” in Mamazine.com (on-line magazine)

2006 Kansas Murals: A Traveler’s Guide, co-authored with Dave Loewenstein, University Press of Kansas (book; funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kansas Arts Commission, and private donations)

PRESS BIBLIOGRAPY (PRINT, WEB, TV, RADIO)

2021 Amber Fraley, “5 Epic Murals to Explore: These Public Works of Art Celebrate Kansas Themes and Life,” Kansas! Magazine, Volume 77 Issue 2 (quote)

2021 Rachel Epp-Buller, “Activism, Art and Design: Bringing Social Justice to Life in the Higher Education Curriculum,” Art Education, Volume 74, Issue 1, 2021 (discussion of my visiting artist presentation about Heating Up; image of poster)

2019 “Three Artists Featured in New Exhibit,” The Newton Kansan, July 19, 2019 (photo, article)

2017 “The Value of Hope: Artist Statement,” Context (Bethel College alumni magazine), April 2017 (two-page photo-spread with artist statement)

2016 Konza 2016 (online journal), https://konzajournaldotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/healing-up-artists-respond-to-climate-change.pdf (featured photo of art with poem by Dennis Etzel,

2016 Joanna Hlavacek, “Talk about climate change ‘heats up’ with Percolator exhibit,” Lawrence Journal-World, March 27, 2016 (photos, interview)

2016 Lori Hasselman, “Haskell artists “heat up” community climate change event,” Indian Leader, March 13, 2016

(quotes)

2016 Samantha Foster, “Artists seek to spark dialogue with exhibit exploring climate change,” Topeka Capital Journal, March 19, 2016 (article)

2015 Conrad Swanson, “Creating a new ‘climate’ for art: Lora Jost’s mixed-media work gets conversations started,” Lawrence Journal-World, August 3, 2015 (profile, photo)

2014 Joanna Hlavacek, “Rise and Shine: Phoenix Award winners promote arts, inclusivity,” Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence, Kansas, October 12, 2014 (profile, photo)

2014 “Parade for the Planet,” Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence, KS September 22, 2014 (article about the People’s Climate March Maker/Speaker Party)

2014 Elliot Hughes, “Lawrence Library reveals new batch of banned book trading cards,” Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence, KS, September 18, 2014 (one of featured artists)

2014 Ashleigh Tidwell, “Mosaic Brings Kansas Nature to Free State Brewing Co.,” Lawrence Journal-World, Lawrence, Kansas, April 1, 2014 (feature, photo)

2014 Steven Hill, “Memorable Mosaic,” Kansas Alumni, No. 1 2014 (mini-feature, photo)

2014 Dave Loewenstein, “Big Art in Lawrence: One step back, two steps forward,” Dave Loewenstein’s Art Bulletin, http:’’loewensteinmuraljournal.blogspot.com/2014/01/big-art-in-lawrence-one-step-back-two.html (one of three artists featured, photo)

2013 ““Cut, Scratch, Smash, Stack” opens May 11 at Lincoln Art Center,” Lincoln Sentinel-Republican, Lincoln, KS, May 9, 2013/9/13 (article about three-person exhibit)

2013 Sara Shephard, “A Piece of the Auction,” Lawrence Journal World, March 24, 2013 (photo)

2013 Alice Davenport, “Starstruck: In ‘To the Stars,’ 150 Kansas poets celebrate the state’s natural and cultural wonders,” (photo of book cover)

2012 Mick Braa, “It’s Not Always Black and White: Three Artists Provide New Takes on Traditional Illustrations,” Lawrence Magazine, Spring 2012 (mini-feature, photos)

2012 Wendy Nugent, “Art Is Alive in Kansas,” The Newton Kansan, March 26, 2012 (article about exhibit that includes my work)

2011, “The Lawrence Report — From December 2010, for January 2011,” January 1, 2011, Review, http://ereview.org/2011/01/27/fast-portraits/ (mini-feature, photo)

2009 Dave Gnojek blog, “Studio Visit: Lora Jost,” http://blog.designojek.com/2009/01/16/lora-jost/ (feature, photos)

2001-2007 Numerous articles about co-authored book Kansas Murals: A Traveler’s Guide (articles, photos)

2007 Jon Niccum, “Like Mother, Like Son,” Lawrence Journal World, April 10, 2007 (feature, photos)

2006 Chris Lazzarino, “The Big Picture: Travel Guide Tells Statewide Stories Old and New in 90 Murals,” Kansas Alumni Magazine, No.6, 2006, pp. 32-39 (feature, photos)

2004 NEA Annual Report, NEA Spotlight, http://arts.endow.gov/features/stories/07-06-ks-mural.html

(features mural book project)

2003 Mindie Paget, “Give Peace a Glance,” Lawrence Journal World, March 16, 2003 (interview, photo)

2002 Michael Newman, “Down on the Family Farm,” Lawrence Journal World, August 4, 2002 (article, photo)

2002 Langston Hughes Mural in Humanities (The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities), March-April, 2002 (photo of mural)

2001 “The Experience of Farmers,” Mennonite Life, December 2001, http://www.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/2001dec/jost.php (feature, photos)

2001 Tom Rombeck, “Mural Remembers Hughes, America,” Lawrence Journal World, November 18,

2001 (article, photo)

2001 “Farm Art Exhibit at Peace Connections,” The Newton Kansan, July 18, 2001 (article)

2000 “Jost Takes Part in NYMRCC’s Artist Retreat Program,” New York Mills Herald (Minnesota), November 23, 2000 (article, photo)

2000 Charlotte Richardson, “On the Farm: Through Text and Collage, Lora Jost Reveals Farm Life,” eightyone (Harrisonburg, Staunton and Waynesboro, Virginia), July 2000 (review, photo)

2000 Laurie L. Oswald, “Women Tell Stories to Inspire Others,” Mennonite Weekly Review, April 27, 2000 (photo of mural, quote)

1999 Tim Unruh, “Community Art: This Creation Will Take Lots of Involvement,” Smoky Hill River Festival Magazine, The Salina Journal, June 6, 1999 (article)

1998 Sharon Coy, “Murals Capture Qualities of People in Glasco,” Concordia Blade-Empire, Oct. 23, 1998 (feature, photos)

1998 Jan Biles, “Weathering the Storm: Artist Tries to Build Sense of Community,” The Mag, Aug. 6 and 12, 1998 (feature, photos)

1998 Rick Mitchell, “Lora Jost: Weathering the Storm,” The Arts in Action, Apr. 26-Aug. 22, 1998 (feature, photos)

1997 Melanie Zuercher, “Art Shaped in Community,” The Mennonite, Oct. 14, 1997 (feature, photos)

1996 Tom Rhea, “Important Days: Lora Jost at the Waldron,” Bloomington Voice, January 25 – Feb. 1, 1996 (review, photo)

1995 “Art Classes at the Community Kitchen,” Bloomington Voice, Oct. 26 – Nov. 2, 1995 (article, photo)

1994 Ann But Meyer, “She Thrives as Art-Lady”,” Rhythm, July 8, 1994 (mini-feature)

1992 “Six O’Clock News,” WMTV Channel 15, Oct. 23, 1992 (story “Picture Your Vote”)

1992 Tom Laskin, “Electoral Collage: Exhibit Asks Artists to Mail in Their Vote,” Isthmus, Oct. 16-22, 1992 (interview, photos)

1992 “Morning News,” WHA Wisconsin Public Radio, Apr. 20, 1992 (interview about “Fax Art Response”)

1992 Kevin Lynch, “Fax Art Creates ‘Masterpieces’ at Local Gallery,” The Capital Times, Apr. 16, 1992 (article, photo)

1992 “Evening News,” WMTV Channel 15, Apr. 4, 1992 (interview about “Fax Art Response”)

1991 Kevin Lynch, “Artist Dares to Care,” The Capital Times, Oct. 17, 1991 (feature, photos)

PROFESSIONAL AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION MEMBERSHIPS, BOARD SERVICE

Lawrence Arts Center

Lawrence Art Guild

USDAC-Lawrence Field Office

2007-08 Board member, Lawrence Arts Commission, Lawrence, Kansas

1995-96 Board member, Coalition of Low-Income and Homeless Citizens, Bloomington, Indiana

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

This is the second in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. The first blog in this series is available at this link:

Links – Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

*Robin, Been and Gone* in *Animals* exhibit, 2015

My exhibit Sound the Climate Alarm includes drawings, mosaics, and collages on themes related to climate change, animal extinction, barriers, border walls, and the pandemic. My focus on climate change and related themes goes back about six years, to 2014. That summer, I had a small exhibit at the Phoenix Gallery in Lawrence called Animals. I had just read Elizabeth Kolbertâ€™s book called The Sixth Extinction, and in it she describes and explains the mass extinction of animals that is going on today and all of the ways that this process of mass extinction is caused by human activity, including killing animals for feathers and tusks, spreading invasive species, destroying habitats, and climate change.

(left) *Death with Cardinals* (detail), 2019, and (right) *Death with Chicken*, 2015

I began making mosaics and drawings in scratchboard and clayboard about extinction. One piece, a mosaic included in the Animals exhibit that is not in this show, focused on robins sitting in a tree (above). While one robin is in full color, the others are obscured or silhouetted to suggest that they had been here but now are gone. I also created some small black-and-white scratchboard drawings of animals in cartoon-like scenes, where the animals are leaving, or being disrupted and carried off by the character Death. I included one of these in my current exhibit, titled Death with Chicken (below), and the influence of Death appears in a more recent piece, too, Death with Cardinals (left).

*People’s Climate March Maker Speaker Party*, 2014

Another influence on the early work in this exhibit, also from 2014, was a local community event called The Peopleâ€™s Climate March Maker/Speaker Party (left). I served on a committee that helped produce this event, a solidarity event with The Peopleâ€™s Climate March in New York City. At the march in New York, as well as at solidarity events around the globe including ours, there was a moment, at noon eastern time, where the hundreds of thousands of people gathered at the march paused to make the loudest noise they possibly could as a way to â€œsound the climate alarm.â€ The folks at the march made a huge noise; they whooped and hollered and used everything from sirens and honking horns to instruments and party blowers, to make a very loud noise.

After this experience, I became interested in the phrase â€œsound the climate alarm,â€ and made some art based on these words (right). I may have latched on to this phrase because I enjoy visualizing sound in my art, similar to how a cartoonist might visualize sound, where marks and lines stand in for the plinks, pops, buzzing, music or anything else I want the audience to visually hear.

(left) *Birdsongs*, 2015, and (right) *Party Blowers*, 2015

More of those first â€œsound the climate alarmâ€ pieces are in this show, too, including a mosaic with birds (below left) whose shapes are silhouetted to indicate presence and absence, with colored lines coming from their beaks to represent sound, and the sound then moves in and around human ears. If we really could hear the climate alarm, what would it sound like? Maybe the climate alarm sounds like birdsongs.

I included visual-sound in a few other â€œclimate alarmâ€ pieces too, including a couple small pieces with people disrupting birds with party blowers (above right), and in the piece Death with Chickens that I mentioned earlier, where Death chases a Prairie Chicken with a blaring-saxophone. The images of people blaring horns and instruments are a way to indicate the hapless disruption of animals by people unaware of their own destructive activity.

*With Nature Sing*, Bethel College Mennonite Church, 2018

*Heating Up* exhibit at the Lawrence Percolator, 2016

Additional influences on the work in this show include projects completed between 2014 and 2018 that are not a part of this show but share environmental themes, including two mosaic installations â€“ a mosaic mural at the Free State Brewery in Lawrence, Kansas, and an installation of six small mosaics (above) at Bethel College Mennonite Church, in North Newton, Kansas. Also, in the Spring of 2016, I worked closely with a committee who facilitated a large-scale community project called Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change (right). It was a month-long series of cultural and educational events that involved more than fifty local artists, poets, and musicians, along with faculty and students from Lawrenceâ€™s two universities, and representatives from arts and environmental organizations. Heating Up was an exciting project and boosted my interest in responding to climate change in my own artwork, too.

In the process of looking back at my art over the past six years, I recognize that in our society and culture, value is often measured in monetary or financial terms. But artists can represent a different kind of value through the language of art â€“ beauty, care, alarm, loss, grief, pathways, possibilities. In my next blog, I will share ideas about how I have used themes and symbols as part of this language in the more recent work that I have in this show.

Visit my exhibit in-person at the Lawrence Arts Center, now through Dec. 21, 2020. Original art and artist prints, suitable as gifts, are available for purchase. Hours are M-Th 9am-9pm, F-Sa 9am-7pm, and Su 1:30-7:30 pm. As Covid-19 rages on, the Arts Center is pretty low-key these days and it is likely that during a random visit to my exhibit you may find yourself alone in the space. If you would prefer a virtual tour, scroll down the page at this link, courtesy of the Lawrence Arts Center.

Blog 4: Making Art in Covid-times

This is the fourth in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. Here are links to the first three:

Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 3: Symbols and Themes

Making Art in Covid-times

My most recent work for this exhibit includes art that I have made during the pandemic. I am fortunate and, yes, privileged, to be mostly working at home. During this time, Iâ€™ve created two of my favorite pieces in the show.

One is a drawing originally intended to celebrate renewable energy, titled Light (above). I like this drawing because through the creative process it became more complicated than I had first imagined. Instead of inspirational, as I’d initially intended, the windmills and power lines became oddly dark and industrial, not the utopian renewable energy future I had hoped for. And the mixing of birds and windmills in the piece led one viewer to tell me about bladeless windmills â€“ Iâ€™d never heard of them. Similarly, the archway of drawn light bulbs, meant to look radiant, includes dated-looking bulbs, not energy efficientâ€”what was I thinking? Yet the incongruity in the drawing feels right during Covid-times, because nothing now is right, and weâ€™ll never have a climate change-free utopian future or the perfect technology to make it so, but, as in this drawing, we still should try.

I also created a collage piece, titled Phoenix Rising (left), that merges silhouetted hands as birds rising from the archway made of orange and yellow thread, representing fire. This piece evolved over time. I didnâ€™t know what it would be until I had painted and glued down several layers of cloth and thread. When I discovered the crux of what I wanted to make, I was very pleased.

Although these recent pieces are among my favorites in the show, I have also found Covid-times to be a difficult time to create art, especially on the theme of climate change.

It was hard for me to think about climate change with Covid raging. Early in the pandemic, I made a piece about Covid, the kind of piece that other artists were making too, a masked self-portrait (above). As I thought about including a piece about Covid in this show, I remembered the quote from climate activist Naomi Klein, which I used in Blog 3, that â€œevery disaster contains every other disaster within it. Every fire is a conflagration of all the other fires.â€ And so, it seems. Climate change is likely to bring more pandemics; both climate change and pandemic disease bring greater harm to people already harmed by racism and economic inequality; and the ongoing crisis has destroyed the jobs especially of those who are already poor. An impending climate crisis, a raging pandemic, a painful economic crisis: disasters within disasters, fires within fires.

In my art-making world, Covid-days are long, but the days fly by. My creative process is like moving through molasses, and I suspect Iâ€™m not unique. Early on in the pandemic, I couldnâ€™t get anything done. What I felt done with, though, was climate change as a theme, at least for a while, and done with Covid in my artwork, too. I wanted to make small drawings on paper. I would try to make a piece every day (that didnâ€™t happen), and I wanted to experiment with gouache. I made seven little drawings as part of this goal, some with pen and some with a combination of pen and gouache. While these drawings didnâ€™t overtly further my climate-related theme, making them was therapeutic, and I included them in my climate change show anyhow.

In my next and final blog in this series, Iâ€™ll conclude with some thoughts on poetic images, and on how I hope viewers will find my exhibit interesting to look at. Â

Blog 3: Symbols and Themes

This is the third in a series of blogs about my current exhibit, Sound the Climate Alarm, on display at the Lawrence Arts Center now through Dec. 21, 2020. Here are links for the first two:

Blog 1: Artist Statement: Sound the Climate Alarm

Blog 2: Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm

Symbols and Themes

Installation view, *Sound the Climate Alarm*, 2020

In my last blog, Roots of Sound the Climate Alarm, I described the sources and background of the first ideas for this exhibit. In this blog, Iâ€™d like to share about some of the symbols and themes that have emerged in my newer work for this show.

While I have included images of birds in my artwork for many years, more recently I have focused on cardinals. Everybodyâ€™s familiar with cardinals and, because of this, images of cardinals have a shared resonance. Four drawings in my show include cardinals. For me, cardinals are versatile characters, sometimes messengers, and sometimes harbingers of joy and Spring. I also include other birds in my artwork, too, often generic-looking birds that represent an assortment of ideas including freedom, the kind of freedom that I imagine goes along with flight, such as the ability to traverse barriers like walls and fences. In two small drawings I exaggerated the wings of a bird in flight to represent a mixture of effort and joy, and in another I exaggerated the wings of a sitting bird (right) to represent a mixture of exhaustion and rest.

I have included images of paper boats and paper cranes in my artwork for several years. I view the paper boats as both fragile and resilient. Iâ€™ve used the boats in two pieces that signify the effects of extreme weather; in one a paper boat is on fire (above left), and in another the paper boats are rocked around by a storm or flood. I have a few more weather-related pieces in the show, too, one that includes wind blowing a bird nest from a tree (above right), one of rain in the presence of a curiously yellow rainbow, and one showing a windchime whipping around in the midst of a microburst.

Paper Cranes Installation (drawings from 2017)

I made a small installation of drawings of paper cranes for this show, too (left). Many of us grew up learning one or another version of the story of Sadako and the paper cranes. Sadako, a Japanese girl, was a victim of radiation sickness from the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima. She tried to fold a thousand paper cranes for good luck and long life, but she did eventually die from leukemia. Over time, the paper cranes have become a symbol for international peace, and that is how I use them in my art.

In the drawings that comprise the installation, I was experimenting with drawing a paper crane every day as a ritual. I began the drawings when President Trump was threatening airstrikes on Syria, which he later ordered. As I drew, I was thinking about the meaning of the cranes and, on some days, drawing became a kind of meditation. The daily drawings were also a way for me to practice drawing and become more fluid with drawing. So, the paper-crane installation is a documentation of that process

Several pieces in the show include images of fences and razor wire (above left and right). These pieces reference prisons, the border wall, detention centers, Guantanamo Bay and, in one, titled ICE (above right), immigration policies like family separation that violate human rights. Naomi Klein recently tweeted, â€œthere is no such thing as a singular disaster anymore â€“ if there ever was. From Covid to climate, every disaster contains every other disaster within it. Every fire is a conflagration of all the other fires.â€ In my show, I try to make a similar point, that climate change-induced extreme weather events contribute to peopleâ€™s need to migrate, and inhumane immigration policies deepen the crisis: fires within fires, disasters within disasters.

I also use arches or archways as symbols. In the exhibit, I use arches in three small mosaics (above), several drawings and a collage. Arches can symbolize doorways, or openings, or passageways. I think of them as a symbol for life and hope. They also symbolize safe passage through barriers, maybe even mental barriers. Some of my arches also appear as rainbows, a symbol of promise or hope in some religious traditions.

In my next blog, Iâ€™ll share about the art that I have made most recently for this show, made during the pandemic, and how the pandemic has affected my creative process.

Visit my exhibit in-person at the Lawrence Arts Center, now through Dec. 21, 2020. Original art and artist prints, suitable as gifts, are available for purchase. Hours areÂ M-Th 9am-9pm, F-Sa 9am-7pm, and Su 1:30-7:30 pm.Â As Covid-19 rages on, the Arts Center is pretty low-key these days and it is likely that during a random visit to my exhibit you may find yourself alone in the space. If you would prefer a virtual tour, scroll down the page at this link , courtesy of the Lawrence Arts Center.

Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change

Heating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Change — to feature art exhibit, month-long series of educational and cultural events

The exhibit is posted as a Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/1T6XHsn.

All project events are posted on the LETUS website: http://bit.ly/1ngBiuv

LAWRENCE — â€œHeating Up: Artists Respond to Climate Changeâ€ is an art exhibit and month-long series of cultural and educational events scheduled for March and April in Lawrence, Kansas. The project brings together dozens of local and regional artists, poets, educators and performers working on climate change. A panel discussion in April includes a combination of nationally active and prominent local voices.

The exhibit â€œHeating up: Artists Respond to Climate Change,â€ opens on Final Friday, March 25, 2016, 5 – 10pm, at the Lawrence Percolator located in the alley east of New Hampshire St. between 9^th St. and 10^th St., behind the Lawrence Arts Center. The opening will feature three brief performances. At 7 and 9 pm, Robert Baker will read poetry by Langston Hughes and the band Ovaries-eez will perform. At 8 pm, local poets Dennis Etzel, Sandy Hazlett, Denise Low, Topher Enneking, Nancy Hubble, and Mary Wharff will read from their poetry, and Doug Hitt will briefly speak about his co-authored book A Kansas Bestiary. The exhibit runs March 25 – April 23 and is open Saturdays and Sundays, noon – 5pm.

â€œWe hope that the exhibit bolsters a community conversation about climate change and what we can do about it,â€ said committee co-chair Lora Jost.

The exhibit includes the work of 42 local and regional artists with diverse viewpoints, some working in teams. The exhibit includes art by professionals and non-professionals, among them professors and students alike.

â€œWe wanted to exhibit the work of artists who are already working on climate change as well as to activate others to engage climate change as a new theme in their work,â€ said committee co-chair Sara Taliaferro.

Art in the exhibit includes paintings, prints, drawings, an artist book, sculptures, and installations. Some of the art pieces concern the roots of climate change and the effects of fossil fuel consumption on the weather, animals, and people. Some of the art pieces convey deep despair. One artistâ€™s work is a metaphor for creativity born from crisis. Additional art pieces offer hope, visualizing ways to work together toward solutions.

Justin Marableâ€™s prints, for example, with images of coal smoke, dinosaur bones, birds and buffalo, illustrate how fossil fuel use and consumerism affect the earth and animals. Damia Smithâ€™s colorful, intricate, enameled copper images reveal how burning coal in the United States brings drought and famine to north Africa.Â A painting by Haskell Indian Nations University student Geraldine Walsey shows a woman looking to the past through winged eyes, â€œsearching for the beauty of what nature once was, and now is rarely seen today.â€

Laura Rambergâ€™s ceramic cloud vessels evoke sharing food and other resources as a way to reduce the need and greed arising from our reliance on fossil fuels. A team of artists (KU Professor Matthew Burke and then students Samuel Balbuena, Cameron Pratte, Vi Stenzel, and Cortney Wise) contributed a functional beehive that, once launched, offers a home for the dwindling honeybee population. Marin Abellâ€™s whimsical 9-foot long flat-bottomed trolling motorboat, complete with serpent heads, is made with Eurasian Milfoil (an invasive aquatic plant that threatens lakes) and runs on distilled Milfoil ethanol.

Jill Ensleyâ€™s interactive board game playfully asks serious questions about our future: â€œWill the last iceberg melt?Â Will the pollinators die off?Â Will you opt to take in those climate refugees?Â Do you believe we can step back from the edge, or that it’s too late?â€

Exhibiting artists include: Marin Abell, Angie Babbit, Rena Detrixhe, Jill Ensley, Neil Goss, Lisa Grossman, Eleanor Heimbaugh, Nancy Hubble, Lora Jost, Dave Loewenstein, Justin Marable, Nancy Marshall, Kaylyn Munro, Molly Murphy, Laura Ramberg, Hirsuta Pilosa, Michelle Rogne, Kent Smith, Damia Smith, Sara Taliaferro, Garret Tufte, David Titterington, Nicholas Ward, Ethan Candyfire, Georgia Kennidee Rikie Boyer, Kyuss Hala, Kayla Kent, Cleta LaBrie, Lori Hasselman, Alyx Stephenson, Geraldine Emily Walsey, Katie Manuelito, and KT Walsh. Three teams of the following artists have created collaborative works: Samuel Balbuena, Matthew Burke, Cameron Pratte, Vi Stenzel, and Cortney Wise; Amanda Monaghan and Pablo Cerca; and Amanda Maciuba, Tim Oâ€™brien and Mary Wharff.

The exhibit and related events are sponsored by two Lawrence community groups, the USDAC-Lawrence Field Office and Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability (LETUS), in collaboration with Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU) and the Lawrence Percolator. (See USDAC-Lawrence Field Office at http://on.fb.me/20riNAM, the USDAC national office at http://www.usdac.us, and LETUS at https://lawrenceecologyteams.wordpress.com/about/.)

The â€œHeating Upâ€ project grew out of a local event in 2014 that brought together these sponsoring groups with leaders from the Haskell Indian Nations University community, on a march and art event against climate change. The success of the 2014 event helped inspire the current collaboration.. (See link for 2014 collaboration http://usdac.us/news-long/2014/10/16/the-peoples-climate-march-makerspeaker-party-lawrence-ks).

â€œHow Can We Work Together on Climate Change?â€ is a panel discussion that is free and open to the public on Sunday April 10, 3-5pm, Parker Hall, Room 110, at Haskell Indian Nations University. The event includes five prestigious panelists, all local, with an exciting combination of experiences and expertise on climate change, arts and culture, community organizing, and practical steps to a sustainable future. Panelists include Saralyn Reece Hardy, Director of the Spencer Museum of Art; Thad Holcombe, retired Ecumenical Christian Ministries Campus Minister at KU and Moderator for Lawrence Ecology Teams United in Sustainability; Eileen Horn, Sustainability Coordinator for Douglas County and the City of Lawrence and formerly with the Climate and Energy Project and Interfaith Power and Light; Jay T. Johnson, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Geography and Atmospheric Science at KU and directs KUâ€™s Center for Indigenous Research, Science, and Technology; Dan Wildcat, professor at Haskell Indian Nations University, Director of the Haskell Environmental Research Studies Center, and Convener of the American Indian/Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group. The panel will be facilitated by Sara Taliaferro with music by Alex Williams and art by Haskell students. The panel discussion is listed as a Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/1L6z6l8

“Mrs. Noah in Poetry and Dance” is a collaborative performance by poet Elizabeth Schultz and dancer Joan Stone, on Friday April 15, 2016, at the Lawrence Percolator, with performances at 7 and 9pm.Â The collaboration includes Stoneâ€™s insightful dance interpretations of Schultzâ€™s poems that reflect on the relationships among humans and animals, examining how catastrophes disturb these relationships, how the resulting tremors connect us, and how we survive together, learning from one another. Elizabeth Schultz, retired from KUâ€™s English Department, has published a large body of scholarly writings, books of poetry, short stories, essays, and a memoir, and is a dedicated advocate for the arts and the environment. Joan Stone taught dance history and choreography at the University of Kansas from 1982 to 2010, and through dance explores nature, dance and politics, women as history makers, and the relationship between gesture and word. The performance is listed as a Facebook event: http://on.fb.me/1njVj3i

â€œA Change in the Weather: Writing From Climate Change Art,â€ is a free all-ages writing workshop on Sunday April 17, 2-4pm at the Lawrence Percolator. Please plan to attend the whole workshop to help create a circle of deep sharing and reflecting. Led by former poet laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and naturalist and writer Ken Lassman, participants will consider their own â€œinternal and external weatherâ€ in relation to climate change by dwelling among the art exhibit as a key writing prompt. The writing workshop is listed as a Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1Qr1led

Hang12 â€œEffecting Changeâ€ includes art made from repurposed materials by teens, coordinated by the Lawrence Art Centerâ€™s youth curatorial board Hang12. The public is invited to the exhibitâ€™s Final Friday opening on March 25, 5-8pm, Watkins Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts St. The exhibit runs for a month and is open Tuesday – Friday, 10am-4pm (and on Thursdays in April from 10am – 8pm). â€œClimate Change is an issue that impacts all of us. To bring awareness to this subject we asked artists to use repurposed materials within their artwork to take a stand on Climate Change and environmental issues.” Watkins website: http://bit.ly/1Rsh4X7

Eco Ambassadors â€œHaskell Wetlands Restoration Dayâ€ invites the public to join this Haskell student-led workday of seeding and planting to help restore the Haskell Wetlands, on Saturday April 16, 2016, 10am-2pm. Bring gloves and gardening/landscaping tools. Directions: Come straight on Massachusetts St. heading S., continue S. past Indian Health Service. Massachusetts St. turns intoÂ W. Perimeter Rd. so keep going and follow road around campus until you get to the intersection of W. Perimeter Rd. and Barker Ave. Dr. Then turnÂ right onto Barker Ave. Dr. (you are going south), go straight and you will run right into theÂ wetlands accessÂ gate. The workday is listed as a Facebook event: http://bit.ly/1ZtKmuh

What’s in a Doodle?

Note: The flying squirrel-doodle to the left (12″ x 20″) is the subject of this blog and is the doodle that I refer to throughout. Other images are from my sketchbooks.

Whatâ€™s in a doodle? Curly do-dads, texture, funny wings, big long tails, emotion, practice, improvisation, new ideas, new media, spilled tea.Â Even the sound of the word doodle suggests spontaneity and flow. Doodling is the quintessential imaginative drawing, and imaginative drawing is the theme of a new drawing class Iâ€™m planning for adult learners this Spring at the Lawrence Arts Center. This class is the reason Iâ€™m thinking about doodling at all and about the place of doodling in my own creative process.

I keep sketchbooks but often begin my explorations with writing. Â So when writing gives way to sketching, doodling, and drawing, a ballpoint pen is in my hand and is often what I use. I learned recently that ballpoint pens are the medium of choice for entire on-line communitiesÂ of artists. And the January 2014 cover of ARTnews shows the work of ballpoint pen artist Â Toyin OdutolaÂ and inside the magazine is the work of otherÂ ballpoint pen artists, too. Inspired by these, I decided to explore this medium in a large-scale doodle-drawing to gain a better understanding of it not just for sketching but for “finished” work as well.

So already through the pen, art and life are connected in a doodle. Or maybe life itself is a doodle because in a doodle, everything feels connected. For example, the first time I saw aÂ Â Scissor-tailed Flycatcher was at the soccer fields in Overland Park, Kansas, andÂ that little piece of history is in this doodle. It isnâ€™t in it literally, but that experience led Scissor-tailed Flycatcher sketch to something that led to something that is in it. When we returned from Overland Park that day, I looked for this beautiful grey-blue bird with the extravagant tail Â in my Kansas bird book and found it, â€œone of the most well-known birds in Kansas.â€ Ha! I was surprised and wondered what else I have never heard of. And perhaps more interestingly, what might be all around me that I have never seen?

The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher eventually led me to backyard birdwatching. When I was scribble-writing some ideas for this blog, I looked out the window at a zillion Starlings at my suet feeder and seconds later two Downy Woodpeckers were there, and then two Goldfinches and then a slew of Cardinals. The feeder is constantly churning with comings and goings and then, of course, there are squirrels. And there are squirrels in my doodle. It was several months after seeing the Scissor-tailed Flycatchers that I decided to get some bird feeders. I got the cheapest feeders I could get — small, plastic and ugly — and a waterer too, and hung one at the side of the house and one in front. And the birds came! And the squirrels came too, lots and lots of squirrels. My husband gave me bigger and better bird feeders as gifts but also grumbled about the cost of feeding a whole neighborhood’s worth of squirrels. But he was the one to notice the littlest and cutest squirrels on the coldest of days saying, â€œWe gotta keep those little guys alive!â€

I began reading Bert Dodsonâ€™sÂ book,Â Keys to Drawing with Imagination, and drank in his encouragement to doodle, to stretch your doodles in new directions, to noodle the doodles, and to mix them up. I joked about getting a bird-proof squirrel-feeder. Or how about a Squird feeder! Of course there are Flying Squirrels. But what if flying squirrels had actual wings? What if they had cicada wings?

Doodling odd flying squirrels made me think of those strange prehistoric creatures that surely should not be able to fly but surely did. Amidst my listening to jazz and â€œAll Things Consideredâ€ on the radio as I doodled, Â I heard Terry Gross on â€œFresh Airâ€ interview author Elizabeth Kolbert. Kolbert talked about her new book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. In it she explores the fact that species are dying off so quickly due to the impact of humans, that it is a time of mass extinction, and is considered the sixth mass extinction on earth.

My flying squirrels will never exist but imagining that they could provided a moment of levity as I listened to Kolbertâ€™s dark accounting of the extinctions of species now taking place as I doodled. I wrestled with the ugliness of it all in the vigorous marks I made in the tails of my flying squirrels. And thatâ€™s not all the bad news I was hearing as I worked. At this same time the Kansas House of Representatives passed a bill to preserve â€œreligious rights,â€ a bill really intended to take away the rights of gay and lesbian people should they ever be allowed marriage equality in Kansas. I explored the absurdity of it all as I doodled.

I went to KU’s Natural History Museum on the day I took my computer in for repairs. Little squirrels had been nesting in there, slowing it down and giving me that interminable spinning pie wheel. It had been a long while since Iâ€™d been to the museum, and I wanted to scope it out as a possible destination for my drawing students. There were old bones and taxidermied creatures. I came across a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher and a flying squirrel (a dead but real one) and made a quick sketch of the squirrel. And I decided that I would like to make some art about animals that are gone.

And then the doodle was done.Â I liked some of the things that were going on in it, especially the bottom-most squirrel. The shape and pattern of it had a visual integrity that the more cartoon-like squirrels seemed to lack. I liked working with aÂ BicÂ ballpoint but wasnâ€™t fully satisfied with it either. I couldnâ€™t get the darks dark enough. I figured out that the basic Bic crystal has a twin, the Bic crystal pens found in the pack of 12 colors, and with these I could eke out a slightly better black and darker blue. I wondered how this image would look in scratchboard, a medium I’ve used a lot. But in scratchboard, how could I Â keep the sense of spontaneity that I liked here, when I find the application of lines in Scratchboard to be more cumbersome?

The doodle helped me ask questions and forge other kinds of professional connections, too. I wanted a better-than-Bic pen for a blacker black and went on-line to find out how I could un-clog my old Rapidograph technical pens. Happily I found an on-line community to help me. When I posted my doodle on my Facebook page, a friend shared about an interesting Â on-line doodling community. And the doodle may have suggested a path forward on an illustration job that I’m working on. It even helped me process the beginnings of a collaboration with Â a composer-friend in New Jersey. Â We hope to explore a music/visual art collaboration and our point of departure will be nature, climate change, and extinction. For her part she will begin composing about a river. I will start with birds or frogs. Then weâ€™ll trade our work and see how the other person’s art inspires a second round and hopefully many more.

Bert Dodsonâ€™s book, including his chapter on doodling, has helped me to push my work in small but significant ways. One key to drawing creatively is to simply draw at all, and through the process of making and working, ideas come. â€œWe tend to think of imagination and creativity as qualities that people have. But in reality these qualities show up only in action–as something you do. Simply put, imagining is what you do in your head; creating is what you do on paper.â€

Thanks to all who helped with the Free State Brewery mosaic!

Nearly Spring is complete! It is a seven-foot mosaic mural installed on New Yearâ€™s Day at the Free State Brewery in downtown Lawrence, Kansas.Â The mosaic was a wonderful project and I am writing to give thanks to all of the people who were in one way or another a part of its creation.

Foremost I want to thank Chuck Magerl, proprietor of the Free State Brewery. He was wonderfully supportive throughout this project. He invited me to discuss the possibility of creating a mosaic for a particular spot in the brewery. Our first meeting was in December of 2012 and, while I was hesitant to take on a large-scale mural and had never even used mortar before, I left the meeting excited about the possibility and hoped to get the job.

The ideas for the mosaic grew out of several conversations with Chuck that meandered through broad topics, among them birds, water, and the Lawrence areaâ€™s landscape. These themes became core elements in the mosaic. Once we finished the design work I worked intensively on the mosaic for about five months. Chuck provided a place for me to work at the Free Stateâ€™s eastside brewery, and also hosted an open house there so that friends and brewery patrons could see the mosaic’s development. Thousands-of-tiles-cut-from-ceramic-plates-and-adhered-to-panels later, I am grateful to Chuck for trusting me with the project and for his kindness, generosity, encouragement and help throughout the entire process.

A number of people greatly helped, too. Conrad Snider, a ceramic artist and friend in Newton, Kansas, provided extensive and detailed advice on everything from concrete board, mortar, and grout to how to build sturdy panels that would hold heavy tiles and yet be light enough to move and install.

Todd Pederson and Jim Lewis of Independent Woodcraft in Lawrence built panels for the mosaic that would fit exactly right in that stairwell spot. Todd and Jim also installed the finished panels with what struck me as remarkable ease.

Brit Kring of Kringâ€™s Interiors in Lawrence contributed tiles for the mosaic and in his good-natured way, advice on mortar, grout, and how best to use them in a somewhat unorthodox application. Jana Flory of Krings Interiors also provided information and assistance.

When I first moved into my brewery-studio I felt like an interloper in this industrial setting. But the folks who run the brewery and the brewers and bottlers who work there were friendly and welcoming and soon I felt at home. They helped me in ways large and small with things like holding the door open while I hauled stuff in, raising my work tables onto blocks so that I could work standing up, tidying the place for the open house, designing and building a brace for the largest of my panels so that it would travel in the van safely, and on. So thank you Steve Bradt, Brad Scott, Eric McClelland, Lucas Hachmeister, Matt Luna,Â TJ Campsey,Â Rick Berger-Munson, Luke Otter, Patrick Raasch, Steve Rold and anyone else from the crew who might have assisted with the mosaic even without me knowing it.

Carolyn Coleman, also of the Free State Brewing Company, made a lovely display about the forthcoming mosaic that was posted in the entryway of the downtown brewery.

Thanks to you friends for your conversations with me about the mosaic and for your support (especially Sara Stalling who got the first peek at my design ideas and Lokelani Braisted who sent all kinds of interesting mosaic process information my way), for your social media â€œlikes,â€ comments, and encouragement, and for attending the mosaic process open house and making it a fun and successful event.

Thanks to Catherine Bolton, Nicholai Jost-Epp, Kathi and Randy Masten, Kristi Neufeld, Kamala Platt, Christy Dersch Schneider and David Schneider for giving me ceramic dishes, pottery, glass, porcelain shards and other special things to incorporate into the mosaic. In addition, Eric McClelland gave me a mussel shell and access to the Breweryâ€™s hardware drawer for me to pick out a few small things to include, and TJ Campsey gave me a bottle with the Free Stateâ€™s Prairie Falcon beer logo on it — so be sure to look for that little glass piece.

Lastly, I would like to thank my family. My parents, father-in-law, and brother never failed to ask me about how things were going on the mosaic and always expressed their excitement about it. And to my husband Chuck and son Nicholai, thanks for all your support and for picking up the slack especially after school, and for keeping me laughing during a few tough times — you two are the best.

For photos of the entire mosaic process, go to Free State Mosaic Process Pics on my Artist Facebook page

UPDATE: Please see Dave Loewenstein’s blog about the recent comings and goings of murals in Lawrence, KS, including murals by Stan Herd at the former Tellers Restaurant, KT Walsh at the Poehler Building, and me at the Free State Brewery.

Better angels, a deer, and a boat

One evening I went on a walk with my family around our neighborhood. Storms were in the area, and the weatherÂ was overcast and very still. Suddenly out of nowhere a deer came running down the street. She was out of place and confused and was heading for a busy intersection. Neighbors grouped together and watched, but no one knew what to do.Â The deer was like a symbol (or an omen) for our world out of whack.

Lately I’ve been investigating ideas towards a theme for a show at Marty Olson’s “Do’s Deluxe” in Lawrence, in November. The process is like making a collage; images and ideas come from almost everywhere as I respond to experiences, memories, and the world around me.

At the core of this exploration, though, is the feeling that I along with many others are standing on a precipice â€“ or facing an impending storm. The storm is literal (wildfires, massive thunderstorms, and blinding heat) and a metaphor too — how the rage of intolerance, war, corporate power, anti-science extremism and climate change threaten our neighborhoods, environment, civil rights, voting rights, human rights.

"Better Angels," 5" x 5", Ambersand Scratchbord

But the change that is in the air is also seasonal and sensual and filled with preparation. While we teeter on a precipice in a worrisome sort of waiting game with many people not responding quickly enough, some people are feeling the weight and see the risks and the hard times ahead. Some will roll up their sleeves and do what needs to be done even though it will be hard to turn things around. They’ll try.

People know what to do with a storm. Memories of my mom and dad canning peaches in the heat of summer for the winter ahead come to mind. I think of the transition to fall’s bitter-sweetness and time passing, when wood is stacked in preparation for the looming winter. But more than that, people come together in the storms of winter and through their collective work and actions actually become the spring.

The seasons are like history repeating itself with a comforting regularity. I can hope for a more reasonable day because more reasonable days have come. Public schools, social services, healthcare and the arts have enjoyed broad public support, even in Kansas.Â And a conservative supreme court (however cynically) can surprise us by upholding the healthcare law.Â Maybe it is too much to hope.Â But isn’t that a good role for an artist?

"Boat," 6" x 8", mixed-media collage

Foreboding and illumination. Churning and solace. Despair and reverie. Images as they develop in my mind and find their way into my sketchbooks, drawings, mosaics, and collages, are about storms real and political.Â But more than that they are about the feeling that comes before the storm; the stillness, the headwind, the first clinks of hail. This work is about seeking the “better angels of our nature” and finding the comforting reverberations of possibility.