I drew some small attention to an art show “retrospective” for Loren Martell’s late wife Karen Burmeister in my blog about ten days ago.
I was blown away by the generous story about the show when I checked yesterday’s paper. I was also blown away by Karen’s collages several of which are on the Trib’s website and in the paper itself.
I’ve grown fond of Loren. He is a thoughtful and multi-dimensional man. He and Karen thought deeply about education along with their good friends in the Montessori school world. This is her first art showing and its a shame that it has to be posthumous. My Mother was an artist too and she did get to have a showing or two of her work before she put away her brushes. Every artist deserves a chance to share their work.
I have in mind publishing a coffee table book of Mom’s work with anecdotes of her life. I’d make about ten of them for family and friends at a cost of about a thousand a book for such a limited printing.
Long before my Mother died I did publish fuzzy, thumbnail-sized images of a portion of her work before the Internet’s bandwidth could do them justice. My Mom hated them and I’ve never found the time to repopulate the page with newer and more detailed images. Fortunately, this is not a problem in the Trib’s story on Burmeister’s work.
You can see Karen’s work at the Duluth Art Institute, (The Depot) 506 W. Michigan St.
