Anne Kingsbury “Slow Improvisation; a Frame of Mind”

November 14, 2024 – March 9, 2025

For over fifty years I have been a working artist using my hands as my primary tools. You might call the work a kind of slow improvisation. Rather than seeing a totally finished piece in my mind, it unfolds under my hands during the process of making. Art has not been an extension of my life – it is my life.  It is my way to deal with daily occurrences – whether they end up as objects on display or conceptual explorations.

I grew up in the town of Turtle Lake – population 600, in rural Wisconsin. There were no art classes in the public school, and the first drawing I remember making was in first grade – a Cannibal with a strategically placed palm leaf. My first teaching job was at Hastings College in Hastings Nebraska, where I met my future husband, Karl Gartung. 

We moved to Milwaukee in 1975; where I taught at UWM for three years, but did not receive tenure. In 1979, Karl and I cofounded Woodland Pattern Literary Center, and for years, like many other artists, I led a double life: Executive Director of Woodland Pattern by day and visual artist by night. Throughout the almost forty years at W. P. my personal work became informed by professional work: text as well as image revealing narratives. Trivial activities became art practice. 

After retiring in 2018, I now spend each day in my studio. In 2023, I was able to complete a major piece begun September 2,1996; an entirely beaded deer hide, covered with beaded journal entries, drawings, and hand-written poems by writers visiting Woodland Pattern. It is featured here along with a range of other works; some still in progress.