Saturday, April 20th from 6-9pm  I will be live painting at the 
Sun Prairie Public Library  Love Your Library Gala event.  This ticketed after-hours event benefits the Library Expansion and Renovation Project at Sun Prairie Public Library.  I will be painting live at the event and the painting will be auctioned off at the end of the evening.  Tickets are $60 and available to purchase on the library website: sunlibfoundation.org

Pictured is a vintage Rowe Pottery Works ceramic urn that has inspired the painting for the event.  Rowe Pottery Works is a functional pottery shop in Cambridge, Wisconsin that has been around since 1975.  This lovely green glazed crock will be filled with sun flowers, muted blue-green eucalyptus sprigs, and blush pink tea roses and white lillies. This floral still-life will be painted live at the event on a 16x20 inch canvas.

Come watch me paint and support the Sun Prairie Public Library Renovation and Expansion Project! 

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August, 12th 2023 Door County Festival of Fine Arts, 9-4pm Waterfront Park, Sister Bay, Wisconsin
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I will be participating in the 20th Annual Door County Festival of Fine Arts on Saturday, August 12th. The art festival takes place in Sister Bay, Wisconsin from 9-4pm in Waterfront Park in scenic downtown Sister Bay. I will be selling original paintings and archival prints. This is a rare opportunity to purchase work directly from me because I don't often participate in art festivals.  I'm looking forward to enjoying views of the bay while sharing my work with you.  If you are in the Door County and surrounding area please stop by and say "hi"! Information about the participating artists is attached. 

Ellison Bay Cottage, archival print, 11x14", 2022

On Wednesday, February 8th at 5pm CST I will be giving a lecture about my interdisciplinary art practice.  Beginning with earliest influences and covering my feminist street performances in Chicago, IL in the late 90's.  

I'm very happy to share that I am starting a new position with University of Wisconsin-Madison as Lecturer of art. I will be teaching intermediate and advanced painting this Spring. It is a dream to be back at the UW-Madison and to be teaching painting at a world class institution and my alma mater. Working alongside so many amazing faculty and previous mentors. I am also joining Finlandia University as a remote Adjunct Faculty member teaching Art History II, Gothic to Early Modern art online. Finlandia University is located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It's going to be an exciting Spring semester with many new opportunities and challenges. I'm ready for the experience and growth to come. As a side note, during my undergraduate studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1997-2001), my required Art History survey course used Marilyn Stokstad's "History of Art" textbook. It's surreal to now be teaching art history using that text. Since I was in grade school I wanted to be a college art instructor. It took a lot of work to be here at this moment. I almost gave it all up to be an undertaker. ​

Honored to have my work included in the 14th Annual Drawing Discourse exhibition at University of North Carolina-Asheville S. Tucker Cooke Gallery. This is my third time having work selected for this extremely competitive exhibition.  This years juror, Charles Ritchie, selected my work Dark New Wisdom and Old Ways (2022) from "938 entries, submitted by 297 artists from six different countries".

My work titled "In Brambles" (2021) is featured in the virtual exhibition at the link below and in physical gallery space on the UW-Milwaukee campus.  In conjunction with the Lonely No More! interactive digital research project with the Center for 21st Century Studies conducted in 2022.  The art exhibit is a part of a larger interactive research project titled "Lonely No More!: The making and unmaking of loneliness, isolation, and connectedness". 

Group Show at American Feral Gallery
​ 2150 E. Washington Ave., Madison, WI 53704
Opening Reception, Friday November 4th, 2022 from 5pm till Midnight.
Free and Open to the public.






​Image: Rebecca Kautz, "The Way of Things", 24x30 inches, acrylic and flashe on canvas, 2021-2022

This Saturday, June 29th (10-5pm) is the first Strange Bird Studios Pop-Up Gallery.  I'll be next door to the Historic Apollo Theater in Princeton, IL  with fine art prints and original artwork for sale.  I have a wide variety of work available from the "Deer Man Series", inspired by a Princeton folk tale, as well as contemporary still lifes. Work ranges in price from cards at $6.00 up to professionally framed original paintings for $400.  Major Credit cards, checks and cash all accepted.  Swing by and say "Hello".   

​Green shag carpet was in the family room of my childhood home; it represents shame.My showexplores non-linear narratives of power, sexuality and gender development in adolescence. Talking with my own daughter and son about sex and gender, and “touch” brings me back to when I was ten and struggling in girlhood.  As a girl, I remember playing “dress-up” with my gender. I would become mother and become father.  I would make-out with my teddy bear. Not dissimilarly, my process of art making cycles through a vocabulary of mediums and forms.  I incorporate a regular, reflective writing and drawing practice in my process of working through creative impulses and social problems. Often, and in the case of the exhibition of works in Green Shag, the visual metaphors and concepts in my two-dimensional work, translate into my physical body.  Simultaneously, I use my own body in performance art to advance conceptual and social concerns in an embodied practice of synesthetic response. I am a kinesthetic learner; physical improvisation in the studio is how I “write” my performance work and also how new images for paintings are developed. Body knowledge is an indispensable part of my development and practice as an artist.  The domestic scene allows a simulation of broader social hierarchies. The play-led learning, language, and pedagogy of early childhood and adolescence confronts notions of empowered identity and sexuality and how gender and personhood can be nurtured or violated in contemporary life. In cases of sexual misconduct and abuse, the resulting effects of shame are noted.  The images I draw from are sourced through an autoethnographic lens of my Midwestern, working class life as I ambiguously flip-flop through time periods.  Images in the paintings depict a subject that could be interpreted as my present day self, my childhood self, or of my children.  The people in my paintings are playing with gender and power and rebelling against securely defined roles. These images become a mashup of iconography across time, and a breaching of both public and private space.  This rupturing of time and space is a strategy of purposeful maladjustment.  A failure to move forward.  Working on paper, the sensitivity of these issues is echoed by the material. Iconographic references include present day events such as the Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics abuse as well as private psychological explorations of the artist’s life. Trumpets, Peeps, Easter baskets, and cherry pies have personal and cultural implications.  Gold medal flour, which has been a symbol for domestic labor and women in my work since 1997, takes on an expanded sign of systemic sexual abuse. Green Shag is outdated and needs to be ripped out.  
 
Without the encouragement and generosity of my committee this work would not be possible.  Special thanks to my Committee Chair, TL Solien. I have a deep respect for your artistic vision and have valued your insight and guidance.   Thank you to Nancy Mladenhoff, who has been a champion of my work from the very start, providing invaluable guidance and advice since applying to the program.  To Fred Stonehouse whose generous spirit and support is emblematic of the teacher I hope to be.  Thank you to Faisal Abdu’Allah who has challenged me and held me to a higher standard of professionalism. I will remember you saying that “an artists’ career is a marathon, not a sprint”.