Back Page with Dale Champlin

 

Artist Statement:

I have drawn as long as I can remember. One early memory—I used a needle to
incise crisp white lines in the black finish of my mother’s prized antique ebonized
desk. I remember being punished as well! Practicing drawing ladies’ high heels
perfected my analytical abilities. In third grade I won a trip to the Nutcracker with
my rendition of ballerinas.

The first of four daughters of an artist mother and minister father, we spent our
childhood out in nature. Summers meant swimming in an Upstate New York
glacial lake surrounded by shale pebble beaches. As a free-range seven-year-old
in South Dakota my adventures included rodeos, the circus, swash-buckling
movies—my grandmother in tow—and hiking mica-flecked paths in the Black Hills.

Many years later I received a BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University, followed
by an MFA in mixed media from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. To support
myself in graduate school, I taught drawing.

As an adult, my artist husband and I moved to the Pacific Northwest, entranced
by arid canyons and indigenous rain forests. During my years of graphic design,
first as an exhibit designer at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and
then as the head of my own design firm, I taught myself computer skills.

Today collage informs my work in both art and poetry. The juxtaposition of color
and imagery are much the same in both mediums.

My inspirations and the focus of my artwork include family, reading, sewing,
mythology, science, biology, astronomy, and geology—all lifelong passions.

 

Oregon poet and artist Dale Champlin has published in Willawaw Journal, Cathexis, Pif, The Opiate, and elsewhere. In 2019 she published The Barbie Diaries. Two collections are forthcoming: Isadora, and Callie.