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about me

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I draw and paint and write and talk. I love being with children.   I used to work in public radio with a specialty in parenting issues.  I have been a Montessori teacher in Minnesota and New York, with a long stint as a head of school in Minneapolis.    I provide speaking services, freelance illustration, and learning sessions for Montessori students of all ages. 


I fill small sketchbooks and journals with my drawing and writing.    I love crowded city streets and windswept mountaintops.   Yellow used to be my favorite color but right now it might be fuchsia.   I swim in lakes and hike on trails and paddle on rivers.   I play the piano late at night.   I have grown a garden and shoveled snow and cooked dinner and hosted parties and raised our children and ridden my bike in Minneapolis for 38 years. 

 

I moved to New York City in the fall of 2021.  I'm making a home here for a while.  I'm learning to love Brooklyn (Ft. Greene in particular) and to ride my bike  to the school where I teach , along the East (Hudson) River.  At  the middle of 2023, I feel uncertain and hopeful.   I want to be a better citizen of the planet and a voice for equity in all I do.  I am learning to live with fierce and open gentleness.
 

In my sixties,  it feels imperative to muscle into my art.

I have a daily practice of drawing and writing.

I want to share my work with you.

Olesen- George Floyd.jpeg

My watercolor portrait of George Floyd was exhibited in the

NorthStar Watermedia National Juried Exhibition 

Wildwood Library /Mahtomedi, Minnesota

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