Helen Klebesadel
Biographical Info Helen Klebesadel is an artist, an educator/coach, and an activist. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin. Best known for her environmental and women-centered watercolors, she often uses the creative process to re-examine and re-present narratives that have taught us to accept beliefs that lower our expectations about what is possible for ourselves, other people, and the world. Helen’s watercolors push the traditional boundaries of the medium in scale, content, and technique. Ranging in size from the intimate to the monumental, her paintings are transparent watercolors on paper and canvas. 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 work nationally and internationally. The Bergstrom-Mahler Museum presented her first solo museum exhibition in 1994. Her artwork is represented in numerous pubic and private art collections, that include of the American Council on Education, West Bend Mutual Insurance, Lawrence University, UW Hospitals and Clinics, Central Wisconsin Center, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and many others. Helen’s public commissions include a twelve-foot watercolor for Ellen and Peter Johnson HospiceCare Residence, and a series of large watercolors for the new University Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Helen Klebesadel earned her BS, a certificate in Women’s Studies, and a MFA in art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also certified as a creativity coach through the national Creativity Coaching Association. Helen has taught courses and workshops on creativity, studio art, and the contemporary women’s art movement for 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 and Gender Studies Consortium in 2000, a position she held untile she retired from UW-Madison in 2018. From 2013-2016 Helen was the Director of the UW-Madison Division of Continuing Studies’ Wisconsin Regional Art Program which was started by artist John Steuart Curry, and has offered exhibition and creative opportunities for Wisconsin artists for 75 years. In addition to focusing on her studio work, she offers private art and creativity classes, workshops, and consultations through Creativity Lessons. Helen believes good collaboration can be a model for world survival. She is co-facilitator of the Exquisite Uterus Project with artist Alison Gates, The project, focused on reproductive justice, has over 200 participants from thirty states and four countries. She also continues to exhibit and expand The Flowers Are Burning: An Art and Climate Justice Project created with artist Mary Kay Neumann. A dedicated educator and mentor, Helen contributed a chapter entitled Re-Framing Studio Art Critique and Practice, to the book New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction, and co-authored with Lisa Kornetsky the chapter, Critique as signature pedagogy in the arts, in Exploring Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits. Helen Klebesadel’s watercolors and prose have been published in Frontiers, Feminist Studies, Interweave, CALYX and Femspec. Her artwork was included in 100 Artists of the Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, published in June 2012 by E.Ashley Rooney, and her art and activism is included in the book, Vision, Passion & Purpose: ARTISTS As World Changers, by Renee Phillips. Helen Klebesadel is a past national president of the national Women’s Caucus for Art and served on the Wisconsin Arts Board as a citizen member from 2006-2013, and on the Madison City Arts Commission from 2003-2006. Helen has also served in leadership roles on the boards of the Grassroots Leadership College, and the National Women’s Studies Association.
Level South Central Wisconsin Chapter
Membership Type Professional