Lisa Schaus - Montana Artist - Willow Wind Studio

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Lisa Schaus, artist Kalispell, Montana Location:    126 East Nicklaus Ave. Kalispell, Mt 59901 406 257-3511 This web page has had 858 unique visitors. Lisa Schaus, artist Website willow@bigsky.net Description: Lisa Schaus was born in 1951 in Schenectady, New York, attended Bennington College in Vermont, and New York State University at Albany for fine arts. The artist then moved to Carmel, California, and attended the Monterey Peninsula College for art history and the Defense Language Institute for Spanish language training. She resided in Cartagena, Colombia for four years, painting and sketching from the tropical coastal plains to the Andes. Pt. Barrow, Alaska was her next home, and Lisa continued to paint in oil, then explored the mediums of watercolor and pastel. She had a one-woman show in 1976 at the US Naval Research Laboratory at Barrow. Lisa then moved to the Washington, D.C. area where she continued watercolor studies, and began a career in professional picture framing. As a member of the Springfield Art Guild in Virginia, she exhibited in group shows at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, and area shows earning awards for her mixed media work. After moving to Montana in 1982, she continued her career in picture framing and participated in local group shows, and in galleries from Lake Tahoe to Cannon Beach, Oregon. Lisa has taught adult and children’s classes in watercolor, oil, pastel, and collage. She worked as an art facilitator in rural schools for Jeanne Hamilton’s Creativity Center for several years. Currently, Lisa is working with rural schools to teach watercolor and encourage well-organized creative activity within the established curriculum. Teaching creative process is one of the artist’s primary interests. "I particularly enjoy working with children in very direct approaches to conveying ideas. Their ability to handle any medium without reservation is a great inspiration to me!" The mediums of watercolor, pastel, oil, and collage are used by Lisa to express passion, mood, and conceptual process about a variety of subject matter. She has explored a variety of traditional mediums for over thirty years as a learning procedure, and feels that each medium serves to convey her current state of creativity. Collage, mixed media, and assemblage have been the artist’s mediums to convey more complex ideas. It is most likely this arena, along with the medium of sculpture will provide future challenges for Lisa’s work. Lisa has received awards from her past associations with the Montana Watercolor Society, and also the national Professional Picture Framers Association. Her work was selected for the Montana Governor’s Mansion exhibit in 1996. In 2000 she was selected by the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce to create a painting for the prestigious Great Chief Award. Lisa was commissioned in 2001, to create a unique sign for the historic KM Building in Kalispell. It currently hangs on the northwest corner of the building. Lisa is a regular contributor to the annual auctions that benefit the Yellowstone Art Museum, The Hockaday Museum of Art, Central School Museum, Big Brothers and Sisters, Ducks Unlimited, St. Matthews School, Sunriser Lions and Glacier Pilot Clubs, Samaritan and Hope Houses, The Winter Classic, and Human Therapy on Horseback. She was selected to be part of a five-member panel to select the artists in residence for Glacier International Park 2003 and 2004.