Crossing Borders Studio Tour 2013 Artist Betsy Bowen

Betsy Bowen

My earliest recoverable memory, from the age of two or three, recalls a trauma about a destroyed crayon box. I have been seeking to recover all the lost colors ever since.

I am an artist and writer who has lived and created for almost 40 years on an old homestead at the edge of the wilderness near Lake Superior's north shore. Woodblock prints are my main thing, and most of these images have been created for book illustrations.

Antler, Bear, Canoe: A Northwoods Alphabet Year was my first book, published in 1991, and relates glimpses of the life of raising a family in the backwoods. Later books that others and I have written depict more about the north woods and tell folktales from around the world. The current interest in folktales and pageantry has led me to create puppets and staging for community theater and dance performances.

Betsy Bowen Studio, the family business, is a gallery and working print shop where I produce editions of hand printed images with my son, Jeremy Bowen. Each of the prints uses a number of layers of color rolled onto hand-carved woodblocks. Each print is an original, carefully labored over by both of us.

Our studio is housed in the restored Norwegian Lutheran Church, built in 1903. Many memories inhabit the textured walls. Several studios and a theater space are active currently; the building is now known as the Old Playhouse.

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