Artist Information for Women Artists and Poets: A Collaboration

Artist Bio

Jane Guthridge is a Colorado artist known for her work in a variety of translucent materials exploring the transformative effects of light and nature. Her move from the midwest to the abundant sunlight of Colorado inspires her work.

Ms. Guthridge has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally. In 2019 she had a solo exhibition “Play of Light” at the Littleton Museum and her work was included in “Colorado Abstract + 10” at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. She was honored by being selected for the Artists in Embassies program and being featured in “Five Artists to Collect Now” by 5280 Home magazine. Her installation “Reflected Light” was exhibited in 2016 at the Center for Visual Arts in“Colorado Women in Abstraction”, curated by Michael Paglia, art critic and author of several books on abstraction. She was awarded artist residencies at Breckenridge Creative Arts, Jentel Artist Residency, RMCAD and Buinho in Portugal. In 2008 she was honored as the “Artist of Recognition” by the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, and with the generous sponsorship of The Kittredge Foundation she represented the United States in “The International Biennale of Contemporary Art” in Florence, Italy in 2003 and 2005.

Her work is contained in the collections of Charles Schwab, Colorado State Bank and Trust, First National Bank of Colorado, Four Seasons, Kaiser Permanente, Littleton Museum, PNC Bank, Raymond James, Texas State University, Wells Fargo and the U.S. Department of State, among others.

Poet Bio

Toni Lefton is the Assistant Provost for Signature Student Experience, Dean of Honors and Scholars, and a Professor of Creative Writing, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Honors at the Colorado School of Mines. Toni has also been the advisor for High Grade, Mines award-winning arts journal since 2000, and it is a labor of love to work with students to bring this publication to fruition every year. In addition, she is an active member of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) and the NCHC Faculty Institute which develops experiential, place-based and arts-based programs for students and educators. Toni is involved in national STEM to STEAM initiatives with the National Endowment for the Arts and National Science Foundation and is a contributor to the National Academy of Engineering Online Ethics Center.

In her other life, Toni is a published poet and writer. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Narrative, The Crab Orchard Review, Kalliope, The Sun Dog, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Kudzu, Thin Air, Ellipses, on National Public Radio and Ms. Magazine, among others. Her first book, Everyday Crimes won the Anhinga Prize, and she has been a finalist for a Pushcart and the Emily Dickinson Prize in Poetry. Toni believes now, more than ever, that the arts are a necessary component for a rich, and fulfilling life, to connect with others, enacting empathy and understanding in our rapidly changing, complex world. Through the various intersections of disciplinary integration, the arts may very well help us all be better humans in the end.

Artist Bio

Karen Scharer’s work reflects decades of art study, and a perspective enriched by travel, studies in natural resource management, and a 17-year career in technology. During her 36-year successful painting practice, Scharer’s work has transitioned from realism to abstraction, and from watercolor to acrylic to oil, a medium which has now completely captured her focus and passion.

Scharer’s large, colorful paintings have been featured in dozens of solo and group shows and received many awards. Her work is represented in galleries across the US, and is included in hundreds of public, private, and corporate collections.

Karen Scharer is based in Pueblo West, Colorado where her home and studio sit beneath dramatic skies just minutes from the beautiful Arkansas River, and a short drive from some of Colorado’s most spectacular mountain peaks. The stunning and varied Colorado landscape is a constant source of inspiration for her intuitive painting approach.

Poet Bio

Lynne Brescia is a Denver-based poet who began writing in 2005. To bring clearer meaning to the world she came from and the one she grew into, her writing tends toward simple poems that illustrate aspects of personal relationships. Her work has appeared in “The Lyric,” “California Quarterly,” “Capper’s,” and “New River Poets Awards.” She participated in four “Fusion” poetry and art shows, and in “Poetic Synthesis” at The Lowry Gallery, in which she was paired with a ceramic artist. Lynne is a member of ArtGym Denver. “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Artist Bio

Colorado artist Deidre Adams works with paint, textiles, paper, and found objects. She spends her days obsessively building up marks, scribbles, stitches, scratches, and tears into densely layered surfaces. She is also a photographer, primarily drawn to textures and surfaces bearing the markings of weather and other external forces. Born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Adams is influenced by the light and color of the southwestern landscape and its beautiful but unforgiving environment. Effects of time and transformation are a recurring theme in her abstract paintings and textile work, which focus on the exploration of shape, color, texture, and mark-making.

Adams holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Metropolitan State University of Denver (Colo.) as well as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems & Management Science and an Associate of Science in graphic design. Her work has been shown extensively in juried and invitational exhibitions and gallery shows. She is represented in private, public, and corporate collections, including the Wichita (Kansas) Center for the Arts, the Ritz-Carlton Highlands resort in Lake Tahoe, California, Metro State University in Denver, as well as numerous corporate offices, libraries, and health care facilities.

Poet Bio

Meghan Howes received her MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from the University of Montana in 1997. She then spent close to 19 years working for the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where she was named assistant dean of communications in 2011. After a stint in the beer industry, Meghan started her own communications business, Howes Copy & Creative, with a focus on brand strategy, content creation, copywriting and copy editing. These days you can also find her slinging whiskey for Denver-based Laws Whiskey House, where she serves as brand ambassador and tour guide.

Artist Bio

Susan M. Gibbons is a fine artist who resides and works in the Denver Metro area.

Her work has been exhibited in various galleries in Colorado, the Fluxface in Space in Ft. Worth, TX, and collected internationally with the Book About Death at the Brasilian Museum of Sculpture (MUBE) in San Paulo, Brasil. Her work is also within private collections. Susan’s work has been included in publications such as Fusion IV and V, Christianity and the Arts, Mars Hill Review, First Fruits – A Compilation of Art, and Edge of Faith Magazine. She was awarded residency at the Jentel Foundation in Fall – 2022, in Banner, Wyoming. Susan is currently represented through Space Gallery in Denver, Colorado.

Susan works with the acrylic, oil and cold wax, as well as with encaustic (pigmented bee’s wax), fiber, graphite, pastel, ink, and mixed media. She also has started making her own acrylic paints out of dirt and rocks.

She holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Azusa Pacific University. Susan has taught as an adjunct instructor at the Community Colleges of Aurora, Denver and at Lamar Community College. She currently teaches out of her studio to adults and children.

Susan enjoys her time with her husband, children and grandchildren when not painting.

Poet Bio

Recently retired from teaching middle school, Julie Cummings is spending her time between two residences, Conifer and Frederick. She is known for her contributions to the literary world through many facets. In addition to being the Immediate Past President of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, and current President of Columbine Poets of Colorado, Ms. Cummings also facilitates and conducts workshops on various writing topics on a regular basis; she also hosts a monthly poetry open mic on Zoom. Ms. Cummings has been the featured poet at several poetry gatherings throughout Colorado and across the United States, such as Woodtick Poetry Festival in Minnesota and Crestone Poetry Festival in Crestone, Colorado. She was also selected to deliver the keynote address for the Poetry of Society of Texas’ 100th anniversary in 2021. Ms. Cummings’ poems have been published in several anthologies and websites over the course of the past several years. Her book of poetry, Ride of My Life, is available on Amazon and direct purchase from the poet. She has a self-published CD, Be Heard, available. She believes there is a poem somewhere that touches each person, it just has to find them.

Artist Bio

Karen Z Haynes: Generally my work is a fusion of representational and abstract imagery. Through still life subjects my paintings explore the juxtaposition of permanence and impermanence, fragility and strength, the resilience of hope. The piece for this exhibit reflects a newer direction artistically as it takes a deeper dive into non objective work and changes medium using mixed media (acrylic, collage and assorted drawing media) rather than oil.

I am a Denver native and received a BFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. I took the long way around to develop my art but have been exhibiting for about twenty five years. My work is currently shown in Santa Fe, NM and Boston, MA. I continue to live and work in Denver. My website is www.karenzhaynes.com and my instagram is under the account karenzhaynesstudio.

Poet Bio

Lauren Sabel lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband Tyler and their two darling children. She loves writing children’s books, traveling to unique places, spending endless hours with the people she loves (including her inspiring parents), and unschooling her two amazing kids, Alex and Ollie. For Lauren, writing poetry feels like breathing.

Artist Bio

Carlene Frances‘ canvas is a field of color, continuously in play from edge to edge, rather than organized in terms of figure/ground relationships. Her work seeks to explore non-objective lie, circles and the relationship between color and content. She holds a BFA in painting and drawing from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, and attended Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan before moving to Colorado in 1974 where she currently resides. Frances has been exhibiting professionally since 1997; her work has been featured in major national and international exhibitions, such as Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, Brownsville, TN, Civic Gallery at Azamino, Yokohama, Japan, Nagasaki Art Museum, International Exhibit, Nagasaki, Japan, Riverside Art Museum, CA. Palazzo della Provinic, Frosinone, Italy, Oceanside Museum of Art, CA., Chelsea Art Museum in New York, NY, and others. She has curated five “Fusion” exhibits, a collaboration of artists and poets, juried exhibits throughout Colorado. Frances is currently represented by Space Gallery, Denver, CO and Globe Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM.

Artist Statement: My paintings draw from the powerful Asian aesthetic that lives in me, a striving for serenity in a world inundated by input; conscious acts of eliminating the unnecessary so the necessary may speak. It’s said that my work seems to glow with inner light. That isn’t accidental; Each piece grows from as many as 15-30 layers of transparent oil glazes that give the surface a muted luminosity and depth. In the deceptively limited palette- In the freeing choices of monochrome- we cast off the excuses of color and resist the urge to wrestle vibrancy onto canvas. In doing so, we discover a muted thing that lives deeper in the soul.

This is the principle of Shunyata; of dwelling in emptiness. To me, this quiet, immersive energy creates an anti-angst; a seductive, visceral breath. Within those still waters, shapes, circles and gestural graphite lines create a harmony of opposites that delivers us into an image without a beginning or end. In the end view, this benevolent softness becomes a relinquishing of control by painter and viewer alike; one that lets us interact with the work in any way we want, with no strings attached. From the immersion in light and the depth beyond the strict boundaries of canvas, comes a particular state of grace: a transcendency that renews itself endlessly in the eye, and challenges our idea of what a painting can be.

Poet Bio

Kathleen Willard’s first publication was in her high school literary magazine, Beverwyck and she has not stopped writing since her poetry debut. Public school teacher and poetry event organizer, Willard’s two books are available at www.middlecreekpublishing.com.

Cirque & Sky is a series of pastorals and anti-pastorals set in the Rocky Mountain West, and This Incendiary Season documents both her travels to India on a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and her anxiety as her mother battled cancer an ocean away during her trip. In the face of her mother’s grave illness, Willard was going to decline the opportunity to travel and study in India, but her mother insisted, “Go, you must go.”

Willard works as a community organizer curating poetry events in Fort Collins and has hosted Writing Parties at the Museum of Art Fort Collins, a poetry writing installation called the Poetry Café at the Loveland Museum, a poetry/origami writing booth at the Loveland Corn Roast, in addition to readings at the Rocky Mountain National Park, Museum of Discovery Planetarium, Wolverine Farm Letterpress, Bas Bleu Theatre, Art Lab, GRRLS Scrap Back Fundraiser for Club Q, Music District in Fort Collins, Gallery R Boulder and Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver.

She attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, twice, the Disquiet International Literary Festival in Lisbon, and was awarded artist residencies at Vermont Studio Center twice and at the Breckenridge Creative Arts Artist-in-Residence Program. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to study the New England Renaissance and travel to New England, where she fell in love with the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Many of her poems have been published in anthologies and literary magazines. Three of her poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

In 2023, Willard will publish two new books of poetry. The Next Noise Is Our Hearts, by Middle Creek Publishing, is a call to combat climate change through innovation and regeneration, and Electric Grace, by Lune Press, which shares her love of St. Francis of Assisi.

Artist Statement

Encountering the paintings of Carlene Francis is like walking into an undiscovered ecosystem. Her paintings create an inner calm and pull you close to her canvases to observe and see and explore. I could not glance-and-go to the next painting when I visited her studio. Each painting compelled me to slow down and look carefully at her intricate brush work, her gestures, her marks, the colors she employs and marvel at her unique techniques with paint.

I slowed down and experienced serenity and was transported to a series of 19th Century transcendental moments articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“The Great Horned Owl Diary” documents my daily visits to a great horned owl nest in my neighborhood from March to May and watch the process of a family owls raising their three owlets.

Artist Bio

Monica Jacobs: Bachelor of Fine Arts earned from the University of Wyoming – emphasizing in Printmaking and Art History.

Exhibiting in varied group, solo and juried shows across the nation and internationally.  The regions exhibiting most frequently on a regular basis are parts of Bulgaria, Mexico, Denmark, Spain, France, UK, Oregon, Wyoming and Colorado, to name a few.

The typical style used in the artwork is done through a mingling of different printmaking methods, such as Etching, Monoprint and Linocuts, all combined or singularly used to create art pieces with multiple facets of color, techniques, depth of levels, even adding seriousness or whimsy.

Usually all art pieces are created with an intent to be one of a kind, though sometimes the same plate or iconographic image is incorporated into other pieces.

Poet Bio

Wenli Dickinson is a water resources engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources.  She studied environmental engineering and hydrology at the Colorado School of Mines. She grew up in Colorado and enjoys poetry, hiking and climbing, poetry, tutoring students in her spare time, and also poetry.  Her work has been featured at the Foothills Art Center in Golden as well as nominated for the Pushcart Prize.