Mary Bowman Cline
Artist’s Statement

In the mid 1960s, the “Art Train” made a stop in my home town of Plymouth Michigan. The four rail cars had been converted into galleries and a classroom which traveled around the Midwest as a moving mini museum. I was asked by my school’s art teacher to represent young emerging artists by demonstrating ceramics when I was only six years old. I knew then that I would be an artist for the rest of my life and one day have my own studio.

Since that experience I have continued to make art using many different mediums. As a child I used clothespins, twist-ties and anything I found to make art. I also identified found objects as Ready Made Art (long before I heard of Marcel Duchamp). That is how I saw the world as a small child and have continued to see it as an adult.

My initial formal training was at a two year college in the early 1980s. Since then, I’ve studied with artists in their studios and occasionally taken classes at community art centers.

My experience as an artist ranges from over eighty exhibits of my work, murals, and art retreats to fifteen years as an art model, sitting in classrooms, artist drawing groups and privately in artist’s studios. Thousands of hours of modeling have let me experience a wide variety of teaching techniques, styles and art history which has also contributed to my education.

Today I have an art studio in the historic Northrup King Building in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. Currently painting with oil on canvas and wood, doing collage art and mini mosaics. I feel an artist should not limit herself to one or two media and miss out on the excitement which comes from new experiences and explorations. Therefore, my work is always changing on the surface, but when one looks at work as a whole, each individual phase always has a connection to the next.