WCA International Caucus/UN Program Honor Roll
2020/2021 Honoree
Helen Klebesadel
“My visual concerns run the gamut from careful study to poetic, symbolic and sometimes political representations of nature and human nature.”
Helen Ruth Klebesadel is an artist, an educator, and an activist who maintains her art studio in Madison, Wisconsin. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, her art has become the place where she explores how she learned her deepest values. Her paintings are most often transparent watercolors on paper or canvas.
Klebesadel is best known for her environmental and women centered watercolors that range in size from intimate to monumental. Her watercolor paintings push the traditional boundaries of the medium in scale, content, and technique. She starts with detailed drawings and developing the images with layer upon layer of color washes and dry brush technique mixed with occasional areas of wet-into-wet spontaneity.
Helen exhibits her artworks nationally and internationally. The Bergstrom-Mahler Museum presented her first solo museum exhibition in 1994. She has shown her watercolors in several American Embassies in Africa through the Arts in the Embassies Program. Her artworks are represented in public and private the art collections, including the American Council on Education in Washington D.C. as well as University and hospital collections. Some of her watercolors addressing environmental themes are in the collections of the UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, as well as gracing the University’s northern Wisconsin Trout Lake Research Station, where she was artist-in-residence in 2014. Klebesadel’s public commissions include a twelve-foot watercolor for HospicCare and a series of large environmental watercolors for University Hospitals and Clinics in Madison, Wisconsin. Her watercolors and prose have been published in Frontiers, Feminist Studies, Interweave, CALYX and Femspec journals.
WCA LEADERSHIP
Klebesadel combined interests in art and women’s and gender studies has played out in her ongoing efforts to build feminist art community. While in graduate school she co-founded a local chapter of the Women’s Caucus for art and served as its second president. She served as a WCA Chapter Council representative and, eventually went on to serve as the thirteenth president of the national Women’s Caucus for Art. During her tenure as WCA President she led the WCA delegation 100 artists from the USA, Canada and Mexico to the NGO Forum of the United Nations 4th World Conference on Women that took place in Beijing in 1995. The NGO Forum took place in nearby town of Huairou, attended by over 25,000 people. Read about it in the WCA Beijing Journal.
COLLABORATIONS
Helen’s appreciation of collaboration as a model for inclusive and positive change has extended to her visual artwork. The Flowers Are Burning is her ongoing environmental and climate justice project with artist Mary Kay Neumann. Since 2015 they have created traveling art exhibitions and maintained an informational website. The website is a gallery of paintings, writings, resources, information and inspiration to add to the growing body of wisdom and knowledge as our planet faces the biggest crises in human history: climate change and the injustices the that extreme weather has wrought. Helen and Mary Kay use their incandescent watercolors to attempt to break through the apathy surrounding climate change, understanding that it is a complex, traumatic, and overwhelming web of interconnecting issues presented to us in ways that we have found easier to ignore than understand. The artists seek to bring a more accessible lens through which to approach the devastating consequences of our denial of the climate crises. They contend that no one person can make all the changes necessary, but each individual can do something, (like voting for climate conscious candidates) to use what power and skills we have to make positive change. The traveling exhibition, and the virtual exhibitions on the website, invite contemplation of the beauty of the watercolors yet evoke a sense of alarm at the urgent need to address climate change through informational panels accompanying each painting. The project asks viewers to focus on what it is they love and care deeply enough about to work to protect it. Additional artworks are added regularly, and a second virtual exhibition, Oceans A Rising was added in 2020 in recognition of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The exhibitions include artworks that were collaboratively painted as well as individually created artworks.
With fiber artist and educator Alison Gates, in 2012 she co-facilitated the Exquisite Uterus Project in which over 200 artists from 30 states and 4 countries came together around one message, “My uterus is my own.” Developed around the theme that all women deserve full access to quality sexual and reproductive healthcare, creatives were invited to transform a plain cloth line drawing of a uterus into an art works embellished using the materials of their choice to articulate their own message of outrage and response to growing restrictions on reproductive choices for women.
ADDITIONAL LEADERSHIP AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Her art research and collaborative creative work is a natural outgrowth of her combined academic interests in art and women’s and genders studies. Klebesadel earned her BS, a certificate in Women’s Studies, and an MFA in art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has taught courses and workshops on creativity, studio art, and the contemporary women’s art movement for over two decades. Helen taught studio art and chaired the art department at Lawrence University from 1990-2000, before leaving to accepting the position of Director of the University of Wisconsin System’s Women’s Studies Consortium in 2000. From 2013 -2016 she also directed the Wisconsin Regional Art Program, a unique program supporting engagement of amateur artists across the State in creative community. Helen retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to pursue full time art making, private workshops and creativity coaching in the fall of 2018. In 2020 Helen did a pandemic pivot, taking most of her teaching online, and continuing her efforts to encourage people to connect through the arts as a way to withstand social isolation through the creation of the Cabin Fever Creative Community on Facebook. Helen continues to paint and to connect with other creatives through her mentoring, teaching, and collaborations.
Helen's art website can be seen at http://klebesadel.com
Her teaching. consulting and coaching information can be found here: http://CreativityLessons.com
Helen Ruth Klebesadel is an artist, an educator, and an activist who maintains her art studio in Madison, Wisconsin. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, her art has become the place where she explores how she learned her deepest values. Her paintings are most often transparent watercolors on paper or canvas.
Klebesadel is best known for her environmental and women centered watercolors that range in size from intimate to monumental. Her watercolor paintings push the traditional boundaries of the medium in scale, content, and technique. She starts with detailed drawings and developing the images with layer upon layer of color washes and dry brush technique mixed with occasional areas of wet-into-wet spontaneity.
Helen exhibits her artworks nationally and internationally. The Bergstrom-Mahler Museum presented her first solo museum exhibition in 1994. She has shown her watercolors in several American Embassies in Africa through the Arts in the Embassies Program. Her artworks are represented in public and private the art collections, including the American Council on Education in Washington D.C. as well as University and hospital collections. Some of her watercolors addressing environmental themes are in the collections of the UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, as well as gracing the University’s northern Wisconsin Trout Lake Research Station, where she was artist-in-residence in 2014. Klebesadel’s public commissions include a twelve-foot watercolor for HospicCare and a series of large environmental watercolors for University Hospitals and Clinics in Madison, Wisconsin. Her watercolors and prose have been published in Frontiers, Feminist Studies, Interweave, CALYX and Femspec journals.
WCA LEADERSHIP
Klebesadel combined interests in art and women’s and gender studies has played out in her ongoing efforts to build feminist art community. While in graduate school she co-founded a local chapter of the Women’s Caucus for art and served as its second president. She served as a WCA Chapter Council representative and, eventually went on to serve as the thirteenth president of the national Women’s Caucus for Art. During her tenure as WCA President she led the WCA delegation 100 artists from the USA, Canada and Mexico to the NGO Forum of the United Nations 4th World Conference on Women that took place in Beijing in 1995. The NGO Forum took place in nearby town of Huairou, attended by over 25,000 people. Read about it in the WCA Beijing Journal.
COLLABORATIONS
Helen’s appreciation of collaboration as a model for inclusive and positive change has extended to her visual artwork. The Flowers Are Burning is her ongoing environmental and climate justice project with artist Mary Kay Neumann. Since 2015 they have created traveling art exhibitions and maintained an informational website. The website is a gallery of paintings, writings, resources, information and inspiration to add to the growing body of wisdom and knowledge as our planet faces the biggest crises in human history: climate change and the injustices the that extreme weather has wrought. Helen and Mary Kay use their incandescent watercolors to attempt to break through the apathy surrounding climate change, understanding that it is a complex, traumatic, and overwhelming web of interconnecting issues presented to us in ways that we have found easier to ignore than understand. The artists seek to bring a more accessible lens through which to approach the devastating consequences of our denial of the climate crises. They contend that no one person can make all the changes necessary, but each individual can do something, (like voting for climate conscious candidates) to use what power and skills we have to make positive change. The traveling exhibition, and the virtual exhibitions on the website, invite contemplation of the beauty of the watercolors yet evoke a sense of alarm at the urgent need to address climate change through informational panels accompanying each painting. The project asks viewers to focus on what it is they love and care deeply enough about to work to protect it. Additional artworks are added regularly, and a second virtual exhibition, Oceans A Rising was added in 2020 in recognition of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The exhibitions include artworks that were collaboratively painted as well as individually created artworks.
With fiber artist and educator Alison Gates, in 2012 she co-facilitated the Exquisite Uterus Project in which over 200 artists from 30 states and 4 countries came together around one message, “My uterus is my own.” Developed around the theme that all women deserve full access to quality sexual and reproductive healthcare, creatives were invited to transform a plain cloth line drawing of a uterus into an art works embellished using the materials of their choice to articulate their own message of outrage and response to growing restrictions on reproductive choices for women.
ADDITIONAL LEADERSHIP AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Her art research and collaborative creative work is a natural outgrowth of her combined academic interests in art and women’s and genders studies. Klebesadel earned her BS, a certificate in Women’s Studies, and an MFA in art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has taught courses and workshops on creativity, studio art, and the contemporary women’s art movement for over two decades. Helen taught studio art and chaired the art department at Lawrence University from 1990-2000, before leaving to accepting the position of Director of the University of Wisconsin System’s Women’s Studies Consortium in 2000. From 2013 -2016 she also directed the Wisconsin Regional Art Program, a unique program supporting engagement of amateur artists across the State in creative community. Helen retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to pursue full time art making, private workshops and creativity coaching in the fall of 2018. In 2020 Helen did a pandemic pivot, taking most of her teaching online, and continuing her efforts to encourage people to connect through the arts as a way to withstand social isolation through the creation of the Cabin Fever Creative Community on Facebook. Helen continues to paint and to connect with other creatives through her mentoring, teaching, and collaborations.
Helen's art website can be seen at http://klebesadel.com
Her teaching. consulting and coaching information can be found here: http://CreativityLessons.com
Disappearing Prairie (watercolor 40x30)
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Where Are the Bees lll (watercolor 30x22)
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Prairie Fire Restoration (watercolor 22x30)