Biography

• Grew up in Escanaba, Michigan (12,500). Dad owned a furniture store. Mom had lunch waiting on the kitchen table for her daughters, Jo and Karen, at noon every school day. We walked the mile home and back to school, within the hour, rain, snow or shine.

• Memories of being in the back seat of the family car, on the way to weekends at our cottage near where the white horse lived. I loved that horse.

• During a fit of teenage anger, I ran up the stairs to my room and drew a large horse portrait in crayon on my bedroom wall. As I hid under my bed covers in shame, my dad cracked opened my door, looked at the drawing and said, “Why don’t you finish it?” I have been trying to “finish it” ever since.

• Came early to classical music. My awakening: Richard Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra. I do think music is the supreme evocative art form.

• Played first chair flute in high school band, orchestra, and Escanaba city orchestra. Went to Interlochen School of the Arts.

• Was a life guard on Lake Michigan in my college years.

• Studied sculpture under Paul Suttman at the University of Michigan. Graduated 1965. Paul swore by #2 Molding Plaster which is still my favorite sculpture medium.

• Experimented with fabrication — cutting, bending and welding pieces of metal to construct shapes. Worked with Lippincott Fabricators in New Haven, Connecticut, and with Peter Versteeg, founder of New Haven Art Fabrication. We created large works together in aluminum and Corten steel.

• Chaim Gross, with whom I studied in New York encouraged me to cast my sculpture in bronze, which I have done for the last thirty-five years.

• The Cavalier Foundry in Bridgeport Connecticut cast many of my early pieces. Over the years I have also worked with the Paul King Foundry in Johnston, Rhode Island, Argos Foundry in New York, and Green Fine Art in Eliot, Maine. In the 1990s I began casting in Asia, traveling regularly to work with Asia Fine Art in Ayutthaya, Thailand, making monumental horse forms and figurative pieces. An unusually severe flood in Thailand one year destroyed almost all my original plaster pieces and their mother molds, making it necessary to begin some editions all over again.

• In 2010 several of my sculptures were cast by Asia Fine Art in Shanghai, China.

• Most recently my work has been cast by Custom Castings in Randolph, Vermont.

• Worked with Umberto and Ugo Antognazzi in Pietrasanta, Italy, creating commissioned pieces in Carrara Marble. In Pietrasanta at that time I began an ongoing series, in marble, of the creation myth Sedna, Inuit Goddess of the Ocean.

• I have a pilot license and motorcycle license.

• Married to Bill Dobson, naval officer, architect 1965. Unmarried from Bill Dobson, navel officer, architect, 1976.

• Co-owned with Bill rest home, in Brookline Mass, early 1970s. Simultaneously owned rooming house in West Hartford, CT. 1976 I owned and managed rooming house in West Hartford, CT, 1970s to 2002. Management made easier by flying back and forth in our Cessna. Mascot was Winston, the Bedlington terrier, black cat George was given to me (an irresistible stand up comedian).

• Teaching: second grade, Jr. high art, college studio art, Hartford College for Women, University of Hartford, CT.

• Created and directed Butterworth art gallery, Hartford College for Women, University of Hartford, CT.

• Married to Timothy McNally, lawyer, 1987. Unmarried from Timothy McNally, lawyer, 1994.

• Partnered with Tony Keller, arts administrator, 2000, still partnered to Tony Keller, 2022. Love our years living working on our Vermont property, Tony’s writing studio in the barn, my studio attached to front of barn, next to gallery.

• I will continue inspired and working until I no longer can, grateful for a very interesting, fortunate life.