Description
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I taught painting and drawing at college and high school levels in California in the 1970s and ‘80s, showing regularly at the Braunstein/Quay Gallery in San Francisco, and participating in many shows in the Bay Area. But needing another way to support my growing family, I eventually went back to school.
With two new master’s degrees in Special Education and School Administration, I returned again to teaching, but this time as a specialist in the areas of teaching and learning in upstate New York. I spent very little time doing artwork as days were filled with classroom teaching, leading professional development, and raising three children.
After retiring, I moved from New York to Chicago in 2015. What pleasure at last to have time to work through ideas, rediscover art skills, and create again.
My watercolors, drawings and mixed media works are connected by a common thread. They are all chairs – based on human form, but human presence is only implied. A person has sat in a chair in a particular setting and gotten up and left, leaving a sense of where they were, surrounded by sounds of cicadas, spring peepers, mosquitos, traffic and the silence of wallpaper. All are implied with an empty chair.
© Julia Huette Costanzo