Creating something new and different has been ʻin my bloodʼ all of my life. As a child, I loved to draw, color, and play with clay hand-dug by my uncle. I grew up in a very creative family of house and furniture restorers, interior decorators, carpenters/cabinet makers, fiber artists and architectural designers. We remodeled many a home in the Aspen and Boulder areas in Colorado. I have refinished old furniture, was a professional house painter for 18 years, and have been a massage therapist for 28 years. Mosaic has become my latest passion in art. It has filled a niche by taking items that might have been thrown out and giving them new life and a reason for being. It is a process of reconstructing and rebuilding, from old to new, but in a way than I have never done before — using many, and sometimes vibrant, colors as well as various themes and genres. Over the years, I have created in a variety of media: pastels, watercolors, acrylics, experimental inks, fiber arts (felting, knitting, weaving), landscape and art quilts, ceramics — both hand-built and wheel-thrown — stained glass, and fused glass. I discern a progression in my work, with what I have done in all the various media leading me to this place where now I can apply all of them to one artform — the mosaic. I have been inspired by artists Kaffe Fassett and Candace Bahouth to see things in a different light. My eye catches color, texture, and patterns everywhere. I love to see the endless possibilities and nothing is sacred. So watch out what you put in front of me — it may end up in one of my pieces! My very early years were spent on a ranch that my great-grandparents had a homestead in Woody Creek, Colorado, twelve miles down the road from Aspen. Childhood and teen years were spent in Carbondale and in Aspen where I graduated high school. I rode and trained horses on my fathers ranch, attended fox hunts, horse shows and rodeos, and went on real live cattle drives. Following high school, my education continued at Colorado Mountain College in both Glenwood Springs and Aspen and at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Beyond college, I became an art workshop junkie. After 35 years in Coloradoʼs Roaring Fork Valley, marrying and starting a family there, we pulled up roots and relocated to Whitefish, Montana, where we remained for eight years, creating and managing a guest lodging business there. At the same time, I was also able to create a line of bath products as well as learn the art of beaded jewelry. In 2006 we moved once again, this time to Halfway, Oregon, a small and friendly community in a beautiful rural setting — a creative and peaceful area in which to continue pursuing my art. Here I began to learn fiber arts from a friend who, with her husband, owns and operates a Shetland sheep ranch in the valley. I have studied spinning, carding, knitting, and felting, as well as helping out with shearing, skirting fleeces, and other wool-related projects. Iʼve learned quilting, fused glass, pastel, concrete sculpture, and mosaic since coming to Oregon. In terms of wider vistas, Iʼve been privileged to have traveled to Africa, France, Spain, Canada, Mexico, Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In all of these places, I have loved seeing the cultural arts and bringing something of that back home with me, ultimately to be reflected in the work that I create here, particularly in the mosaic medium. My work has been shown in Colorado galleries in Aspen, Basalt, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs, and Vail. Currently my work can be seen at the following locations: Artizen Gallery, McCall, Idaho; Brownʼs Gallery, Boise, Idaho; Carnegie Crossroads Art Center, Baker City, Oregon; Peterson's Gallery, Baker City, Oregon and Halfway Whimsical, Halfway, Oregon. For online images of the work, please visit our familyʼs website at www.WredenArt.com.