FACES…Professional Artist
I love interpreting the face into a cheery and cute caricature; as a serious traditional portrait or as hand-cut classic silhouette; or even the whole figure in a fun artsy gesture backside drawing. I consider myself a “High Quality” Quick Sketch Artist and an Expressional Engineer and I have over 20 years of experience of capturing people on paper all over the world. Originally from Midland, Michigan, I earned my Bachelors of Art double majoring in Spanish and Studio Art from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. and spent my summers as an assistant manager and artist drawing portraits and caricatures at Cedar Point of Sandusky, OH. Upon graduating I became a Park Manager operating the art and photo concessions at amusement parks in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and New York. Currently I run my own business, DrawnByDeb.com, and draw at special events all over the country and at art fairs and festivals throughout Michigan. I also do classroom and art club live demonstrations and presentations.
SPACES…Architectural Conservator Technician and Project Manager
After years of working with talented artists and hiring and training new ones, I returned to Michigan in 2002 to start my own business and pursue my Masters of Science in Historic Preservation at Eastern Michigan University. So, then, I began to go beyond the face and started to research, interpret, conserve, repair, paint, replicate, and decorate the historic space. Working with architectural conservator Ron Koenig of Building Arts and Conservation since 2003 I have documented, condition assessed, figured treatment and repairs, stripped, cleaned, sculpted, painted , gilded, stenciled, and stained decorative finishes and surfaces in landmark buildings such as the University of Michigan Law Research Library, Detroit Athletic Club, Meadow Brook Hall, Applewood Estate, Cranbrook Educational Community and Old City Hall History Museum in Fort Wayne , IN. I have also completed personal projects on a smallerscale with Materials Unlimited and directly with the client.
PLACES…Cartwheeling Globalista of Goodwill
Besides working in all these wonderful spaces, I have been all over the place traveling, learning, and volunteering. I consider myself a consumer of culture- I love learning how others live and how their beliefs and culture are manifested in their art, architecture and rituals. In Peru I worked with kids in a before/after school program and then designed murals for the children to paint. In Ireland, as a college student, I taught at the elementary school and then orchestrated an exterior mural that the entire school could paint when it stopped raining. I drew and donated caricatures at a women’s shelter in Nepal, portraits at an orphanage in Spain, and in a school in the Dogon Country in Mali. I have also completed conservation workshops rebuilding a HaHa wall at Kedleston Hall in England, restoring a stone castle in St.Victor La Coste in the south of France, making adobe bricks and repairing a 300 year old Mission church in Chihuahua, Mexico, and helping to complete my final project for my Masters; documenting columns and wall paintings in a 15th century monastery while doing a fresco workshop with an Italian Conservator in Seravalle, Italy. Along with documenting the crumbling stone tower houses in the World Heritage City Gjirokastra, Albania, I also drew and demonstrated the quick portrait and gesture caricature in a high school art class that a Peace Corps volunteer was teaching.
