Welcome to Ann-S-Thesia: Who is She?

Birthdate June 30, 1961, Racine, Wisconsin

Useful Degree BFA, Spring 1984, Colorado State University

Useless Degree MFA, Spring 1993, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Married February 12, 1988 to artist Stan Starbuck, at the Justice of the Peace, Larimer County Courthouse, Fort Collins, Colorado, with a statuette of John Wayne and assorted duck decoys witnessing. FYI, not everyone who gets married in that manner is pregnant. I certainly wasn't; we just didn't want a church wedding or religious person presiding. And we couldn't afford to have a big wing-ding bash, either.

Places Lived Racine, Wisconsin, 1961-1962
South Bend, Indiana, 1962-1967
Raynham, Massachusetts, 1967-1969
Liverpool, New York, 1969-1971
Fort Collins, Colorado, 1971-1989
Madison, Wisconsin, 1989-present

Animals Cats Natasha (b. 1985), Vladimir (b. 1986) and Persephone (b. 1991); Pug Hieronymus (b. 1990) and Boston Terrier Plato (b. 1996)

Exhibits since 1983 34 solo, 10 two-person, 25 group, 14 invitational and 90 juried shows, and I'm too tired to keep counting

Upcoming Solo Exhibits Lakeland College, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, February, 1998

Current Position Freelancing as a Desktop Publisher and making art full-time

Vital Stats 5'2," 120#, natural-but-also-assisted-blonde hair, green eyes, black clothes, Converse AllStars, never pumps or polyester.

Fave Food Sushi. No, it is not a yuppie food. It is traditional Japanese food. I am neither yuppie nor Japanese. (My bank account and genetics, respectively, are proof of that.) It's just that sushi happens to be absolutely delicious.

Fave Slogan (that I made up) If you can't join them, beat them.

Things I Don't Have that I Can Live Without Religion, children, retirement funds, an arrogant wealthy husband, a tidy house, a microwave oven, a bread machine, central air, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, IBM products, video games, the black plague, roaches.

  Things I Have that I Can't Live Without Stan, my animals (or any animals...I know mine aren't immortal), my imagination, my health, my Power Mac and assorted peripherals (they're the only way I can make money lately, save for the occasional art sale), indoor heat (I live in Wisconsin, after all), my little house and tiny yard with flowers, making art (physical or digital) every day, lava lamps...er, maybe I can live without those due to the events as of late..., cactii, african violets, collection of beautiful stones, gazing balls (or lawn balls)--Wisconsinites, you know what those are; those of you out west must be completely confused.

Things I Don't Have that I Wish I Did Car(s) that start in the winter that don't stall out, more storage space for my art, our master bedroom finished so Stan can use the studio we're currently sleeping in (Stan?), ability to take vacations often to see our friends in Colorado more frequently.

  Things I Have that I Wish I Didn't Student loans up the wazoo.

Fave Current TV Sitcom Seinfeld. My life is a Seinfeld skit.

  Fave Current TV Drama
The X Files. Stan and I just discovered it this year (we really don't watch TV much...really) after it was suggested by friends and my mom, of all people, that we'd enjoy it. It has now grown into our latest obsession. Here are the results from my recent "did Mulder really die" survey.

Fave TV Show of All Time Twin Peaks. Never has TV gone this far or been this good. Once a year we bring out our TP collection and watch it again. Want to see pictures of us from Halloween '92 as Bob and Laura?

Fave Classical Music/Composers Mozart, Rossini, Beethoven, Bach's Toccata and Fugue, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Bizet's Carmen, Borodin's Prince Igor, Orff's Carmina Burana

Fave Rock and Roll Bands of All Time This encompasses over 20 years of my life (more like almost all my life if you count when I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show), so the list is not "genre" specific. Here it goes, starting at the beginning up to the present. Bold denotes I saw them in concert. Hope I didn't forget anyone (the word "The" has been omitted): Beatles (especially Lennon), Stones, Who, Kinks, Animals, Yardbirds, Hendrix, Doors, Traffic, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground, Stooges, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Clash, Damned, Siouxsie, Dead Kennedeys, Cramps, Sisters of Mercy, Birthday Party/Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, REM, Nirvana, Hole, Sonic Youth, Jesus Lizard, Babes in Toyland

Music I Hate Country Western, Easy Listening, passionless bland pop pablum, The Late 70s Bands That Wouldn't Die like Journey, Boston, Foreigner, Van Halen, Styx, Kansas etc. And I'm not very fond of The Dead, either, but what do you expect from an old punk?

I Despise... Child molesters and rapists, bigots, people who flaunt their wealth at those less wealthy, people who think everyone should have all the financial security and products that they have, Disney Witches (a topic on Disney Witches will hopefully appear at The Pharmacy, but for now, let's just say it's manipulative, greedy women who think they have some magickal New Age power, when really they're just people like you and I.)

Visual Artists I Used to Like a Lot Dali, Toulouse-Lautrec, Magritte, Warhol (he signed a book for me when he came to CSU in 1981), Hans Hoffman, Hieronymous Bosch (named my dog after him), Gustav Klimt

Artists I Currently Like Vasa, Dale Chihouly, Tiffany (the early iridescent art glass works), artists creating with molten plastics and glass because it is something I cannot do and admire. (I'm a Cancer, a water sign...I work with cold, wet, shimmering materials like metallic acrylic paint, metal leaf, etc. If I were a fire sign, I'd probably be able to handle the hot fires of glass ovens better.) I am also fascinated by Islamic and Celtic art for their ornamentality and non-objective quality. Question: Why the lack of college-level study on Celtic art? Lately people complain that art history curriculum is very Euro-centered, which I agree with, but here is a part of Europe that is extremely hard to find books on, let alone textbooks on, and never covered in a survey-level art history core course. Why? I sense a conspiracy afoot.

Art I've Re-discovered M.C.Escher! I loved Escher in high school (as did most aspiring high-school artists), but he sort of fell out of favor with me as I went in a more expressive, colorful style. But within the past few months I have been researching and studying symmetry patterns and have found that Escher used tiling pattern theory in many of his works. His approach to solving tiling problems is fascinating. I also realized I was not appreciating Escher properly before.

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Birthdate	June 30, 1961, Racine, Wisconsin
Useful Degree	BFA, Spring 1984, Colorado State University
Useless Degree	MFA, Spring 1993, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Married	February 12, 1988 to artist Stan Starbuck, at the Justice of the Peace, Larimer County Courthouse, Fort Collins, Colorado, with a statuette of John Wayne and assorted duck decoys witnessing. FYI, not everyone who gets married in that manner is pregnant. I certainly wasn't; we just didn't want a church wedding or religious person presiding. And we couldn't afford to have a big wing-ding bash, either.
Places Lived	Racine, Wisconsin, 1961-1962 South Bend, Indiana, 1962-1967 Raynham, Massachusetts, 1967-1969 Liverpool, New York, 1969-1971 Fort Collins, Colorado, 1971-1989 Madison, Wisconsin, 1989-present
Animals	Cats Natasha (b. 1985), Vladimir (b. 1986) and Persephone (b. 1991); Pug Hieronymus (b. 1990) and Boston Terrier Plato (b. 1996)
Exhibits since 1983	34 solo, 10 two-person, 25 group, 14 invitational and 90 juried shows, and I'm too tired to keep counting
Upcoming Solo Exhibits	Lakeland College, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, February, 1998
Current Position	Freelancing as a Desktop Publisher and making art full-time
Vital Stats	5'2," 120#, natural-but-also-assisted-blonde hair, green eyes, black clothes, Converse AllStars, never pumps or polyester.
Fave Food	Sushi. No, it is not a yuppie food. It is traditional Japanese food. I am neither yuppie nor Japanese. (My bank account and genetics, respectively, are proof of that.) It's just that sushi happens to be absolutely delicious.
Fave Slogan (that I made up)	If you can't join them, beat them.
Things I Don't Have that I Can Live Without	Religion, children, retirement funds, an arrogant wealthy husband, a tidy house, a microwave oven, a bread machine, central air, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, IBM products, video games, the black plague, roaches.
Things I Have that I Can't Live Without	Stan, my animals (or any animals...I know mine aren't immortal), my imagination, my health, my Power Mac and assorted peripherals (they're the only way I can make money lately, save for the occasional art sale), indoor heat (I live in Wisconsin, after all), my little house and tiny yard with flowers, making art (physical or digital) every day, lava lamps...er, maybe I can live without those due to the events as of late..., cactii, african violets, collection of beautiful stones, gazing balls (or lawn balls)--Wisconsinites, you know what those are; those of you out west must be completely confused.
Things I Don't Have that I Wish I Did	Car(s) that start in the winter that don't stall out, more storage space for my art, our master bedroom finished so Stan can use the studio we're currently sleeping in (Stan?), ability to take vacations often to see our friends in Colorado more frequently.
Things I Have that I Wish I Didn't	Student loans up the wazoo.
Fave Current TV Sitcom	Seinfeld. My life is a Seinfeld skit.
Fave Current TV Drama	The X Files. Stan and I just discovered it this year (we really don't watch TV much...really) after it was suggested by friends and my mom, of all people, that we'd enjoy it. It has now grown into our latest obsession. Here are the results from my recent "did Mulder really die" survey.
Fave TV Show of All Time	Twin Peaks. Never has TV gone this far or been this good. Once a year we bring out our TP collection and watch it again. Want to see pictures of us from Halloween '92 as Bob and Laura?
Fave Classical Music/Composers	Mozart, Rossini, Beethoven, Bach's Toccata and Fugue, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Bizet's Carmen, Borodin's Prince Igor, Orff's Carmina Burana
Fave Rock and Roll Bands of All Time	This encompasses over 20 years of my life (more like almost all my life if you count when I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show), so the list is not "genre" specific. Here it goes, starting at the beginning up to the present. Bold denotes I saw them in concert. Hope I didn't forget anyone (the word "The" has been omitted): Beatles (especially Lennon), Stones, Who, Kinks, Animals, Yardbirds, Hendrix, Doors, Traffic, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground, Stooges, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Clash, Damned, Siouxsie, Dead Kennedeys, Cramps, Sisters of Mercy, Birthday Party/Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, REM, Nirvana, Hole, Sonic Youth, Jesus Lizard, Babes in Toyland
Music I Hate	Country Western, Easy Listening, passionless bland pop pablum, The Late 70s Bands That Wouldn't Die like Journey, Boston, Foreigner, Van Halen, Styx, Kansas etc. And I'm not very fond of The Dead, either, but what do you expect from an old punk?
I Despise...	Child molesters and rapists, bigots, people who flaunt their wealth at those less wealthy, people who think everyone should have all the financial security and products that they have, Disney Witches (a topic on Disney Witches will hopefully appear at The Pharmacy, but for now, let's just say it's manipulative, greedy women who think they have some magickal New Age power, when really they're just people like you and I.)
Visual Artists I Used to Like a Lot	Dali, Toulouse-Lautrec, Magritte, Warhol (he signed a book for me when he came to CSU in 1981), Hans Hoffman, Hieronymous Bosch (named my dog after him), Gustav Klimt
Artists I Currently Like	Vasa, Dale Chihouly, Tiffany (the early iridescent art glass works), artists creating with molten plastics and glass because it is something I cannot do and admire. (I'm a Cancer, a water sign...I work with cold, wet, shimmering materials like metallic acrylic paint, metal leaf, etc. If I were a fire sign, I'd probably be able to handle the hot fires of glass ovens better.) I am also fascinated by Islamic and Celtic art for their ornamentality and non-objective quality. Question: Why the lack of college-level study on Celtic art? Lately people complain that art history curriculum is very Euro-centered, which I agree with, but here is a part of Europe that is extremely hard to find books on, let alone textbooks on, and never covered in a survey-level art history core course. Why? I sense a conspiracy afoot.
Art I've Re-discovered	M.C.Escher! I loved Escher in high school (as did most aspiring high-school artists), but he sort of fell out of favor with me as I went in a more expressive, colorful style. But within the past few months I have been researching and studying symmetry patterns and have found that Escher used tiling pattern theory in many of his works. His approach to solving tiling problems is fascinating. I also realized I was not appreciating Escher properly before.