Resident Artists

Karen Steen

After years of working as an illustrator for magazines such as Modern Maturity, Disney Channel and Shape, California native Karen Steen wanted to expand her artistic horizons. She began going to evening workshops to learn printmaking and mixed media techniques and found the new methods liberating. Her transitions from being a commercial artist to pursuing a more personal form of expression culminated when she moved to the East Coast and earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Karen recalls gravitating toward the art department when she was an undergraduate at Colorado College, but she didn’t seriously pursue art until 10 years later, when she returned to school to earn a degree in illustration at Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. The technical and conceptual skills she used as an illustrator are important to her fine art practice even though she now works more abstractly and is guided by intuition instead of an art director.

Part of Karen’s artistic life involves her commitment to art education. She believes that there is a freedom in art that doesn’t exist in other endeavors.

“If children learn to use and be comfortable with that freedom, we will have a richer, more flexible and creative society,” she says. “The empowerment that comes with being a creative problem-solver will help young people in whatever they choose to pursue in life.”

This belief inspired Karen to develop a volunteer art program at her childrens’ elementary school. Art was being overlooked in a time and budget constricted environment, so Karen put together volunteers, art lessons, materials and a master schedule, ensuring that every student received art instruction.

Karen’s work includes drawing, printmaking, collage and mixed media. Her unique pieces are made with a variety of materials, including paints, inks, cardboard, wood, nails, wire, thread and mesh. She likes to capitalize on changes to materials produced by drips, rust, wrinkling or immersion in liquid. The microscopic realm is her primary source of inspiration. Its myriad forms and intricate systems, which are the building blocks of the universe, are a source of understanding and mystery. Her art, sometimes whimsical or bizarre, always produces a sense of wonderment.

Artist Statement

“Making art, you can get so isolated. It’s a wonderful situation to have this community of artists right here. I think that’s one thing that really attracted me to the Banana Factory.”

-Karen Steen