Tag: Artist of the month

Artist of the Month: Artist Focus on Rhonda Kuntz

Dawn Price Rhonda Kuntz grew up in Kentucky, moved to Texas where she raised her children, and retired to Florida. As life changed, she found her way to SaddleBrooke where her good friend helped her find her forever home. Rhonda welcomed me into her home, which houses her art studio and showcases her own work,…

Artist of the Month: D. Vincent Biase

Dawn Price If you are a member of the SaddleBrooke Fine Arts Guild (SBFAG) and attend any meetings, you are fortunate to be greeted at the door by Vincent Biase and his lovely wife Dona. They are newlyweds who moved to SaddleBrooke in 2019 from Hudson Valley. Although married just a few years, they have…

Artist of the Month: Daphne Cates

Dawn Price Meeting up with new SaddleBrooke resident Daphne Cates from Idaho Falls, I asked what drew her here. Newly married, she had been living up North with her husband of three years and her horse. They recently did a road trip to visit family in Tucson, and Daphne was not enamored with the heat…

Artist of the Month: Mary Baum

LaVerne Kyriss Mary Baum always liked art. Like many other women of her generation, she saw this as a pleasant pastime. As a young woman, she expected to work for a while, get married, and have a family. When that track wasn’t moving as fast as she wanted, she decided college would be a good next…

Artist of the Month: Gretchen Bierbaum Blends Found Objects and Recycled Materials into Artwork

LaVerne Kyriss For Gretchen Bierbaum, discovering collage was the perfect blending of her education in both art and test measurements and statistics. “When I was studying art in college, classes in collage and watercolor weren’t even offered. Exploring collage was an aha experience,” she explained. “Collage is more visually exciting than flat painting. It involves…

Minnesota Artist Brings New Technique to SaddleBrooke

LaVerne Kyriss Connie Kotke first learned about rosemaling when she was a teen attending Norwegian camp. This summer experience immersed her in all things Norwegian, from language and crafts to food and culture. She explained that rosemaling is a decorative folk art that originated in Norway in the late 1600s and reached its height in…