Gold Medalist Portfolios

I grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota and attended the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, where I earned by bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering in 1999. We moved to the Twin Cities where I also received my master’s degree in Intercultural Leadership. After returning to Rapid City, I began rosemaling in 2014, and began painting under Judith Kjenstad in 2018, which has been one of my greatest privileges. It goes without saying that her painting in the old ways is my biggest influence. Knut Luraas and Ola Bjella are my rosemaling crushes. 

I believe that everyone has a need to create. For me, rosemaling is researching, learning, designing, creating, and preserving – it really hits all the marks. I also love architectural salvage. Using things in building and design that have a story, and then giving them a second life is fulfilling and more interesting than buying something new. Painting from old pieces is similar for me. Giving a piece of folk art a second story in a new piece is satisfying in that same way. 

My husband, Ed, and I have five children. In addition to rosemaling, I love traveling anywhere new, taking family road trips, riding roller coasters with my kids, cooking, skiing, and most recently, house building.

That understanding began to come when I took a knife making class with Håvard Bergland at Vesterheim in the early 1990s. I had long been interested in knives, and I was particularly beguiled by the organic unity between the tollekniv and its sheath. The sheath was especially mysterious. How could such a thing be made?

Håvard was a rigorous and generous teacher, and he was also a walking encyclopedia of Norse folk art. That initial experience led to a long succession of knife classes with other Norwegian makes, and to a widening interest in the more general traditions of Norse craftsmanship. As I gained experience, I began to discover commonalities among the disciplines. I saw knifemaking in specific and Norse folk art in general as a ceaseless quest to achieve the unity of form with function and the marriage between beauty and utility.

As a knife maker, I see myself more as craftsman than as artist, and I see the goal of craftsmanship as a striving toward the functional unity of the useful with the beautiful. That goal is certainly an essential part of the Norse knife tradition, and I know now that it applies with equal aptitude to a wide variety of other pursuits as well. It might not even be too bad as a principle by which to live.