I grew up in St. Charles, Minnesota, a small rural town of about 3,000 residents. I was shy and anxious around people. I spent a lot of time daydreaming and drawing.
When I had the chance, I took every art class available to me. I attended Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on the advice of my high school art teacher. I double majored in Philosophy and Fine Art with an emphasis on sculpture and drawing. I spent a semester in New York and went to many museums and performances. The artwork, plays, dances, and music were unforgettable. They showed me how emotionally moving thoughtfully created artwork could be. I wanted to make things like that.
After college, in 2005, I moved to Washington State with my future husband. I worked three jobs, volunteered at the Museum of Northwest Art, and continued to write, draw, and sculpt. We moved to Arizona a year later. When my kids were born (in 2008 and 2011) I focused on caring for them and working a full-time office job, while plotting a plan for returning to studio art.
In 2012, I began to illustrate a book written by my brother, Seth Ode, called Morgan the Ox using watercolor and pen and ink. I worked a little each night after work, and when my kids went to bed. It was finished in about a year. I self-published the book in 2015 using funds raised on Kickstarter. All five hundred first edition hard cover copies were sold.
After the book, I kept going in an illustrative direction, but I wanted to paint larger, more realistic paintings. One day, my daughter dressed her dinosaur toy in a Barbie tutu. I did a little drawing of it and then a few more. They made us laugh, yet they were also strangely beautiful.
Later, I moved on to larger oil on canvas paintings and other silly animals painted with attention to character and detail. I began to show them at art fairs, and they struck people with a sort of delighted befuddlement, which I found very satisfying. Showing artwork like this was a nice way for a shy Midwesterner to connect with all kinds of wonderful people.
In 2022, I succeeded in publishing another book using funds raised through Kickstarter. The book entitled “There Will Be Nonsense.” includes over 30 paintings paired with silly questions.
