Meet: Karen McAlister Shimoda

FACETIME Silent Auction Artist Karen McAlister Shimoda 

Karen McAlister Shimoda is an artist and freelance editor who has been living in Missoula, Montana since September 2007. Prior to Missoula, she spent many years in various locations and occupations. She grew up in Southern California; raised her two children in Connecticut; worked in New Jersey and New York City; and has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and Central America. She has been a teacher, writer, editor, sign painter, and fine artist. In Missoula, she has been able to create a balance in her work life, between editing and producing art. In both, she pays attention to the details yet strives to present the essence of the subject.

Karen has a BA degree in Art History from Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and MA degrees in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and in East Asian Studies from Columbia University in New York City. Over the years since childhood, she has also taken courses in oil painting, drawing, printmaking, book illustration, and photography.

Since moving to Montana, Karen has exhibited her artwork most notably in the Missoula Art Museum’s Annual Art Auction (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), and as one of 60 Montana artists chosen to exhibit in the inaugural Montana Triennial (2009). She has shown a series of her work, titled Specimens, in solo exhibitions at the University of Montana Center Art Gallery (December 2009) and The Frame Shop in Hamilton (September 2010). Karen’s work was included in the 11^th Anniversary Show at Turman Larison Contemporary in Helena (June 2011) and in a two-woman show, titled Mindscapes, with Pamela Caughey at the Brink Gallery in Missoula (September 2011).

Karen was awarded a one-month residency at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, Wyoming (April/May 2011). 

Yesterday

           

Yesterday. Of the past, but still in the present. Yes, the word, but more so the song.

McCartney’s voice awoke my passionate spirit, during my early teen years. And I played his melancholy song endlessly. I wasn’t so much focused on troubles as I was on the mood. And that mood told me the opposite – that yesterday was different from now, but that now could be better than then, not necessarily worse. McCartney actually gave me hope.

But I believe in yesterday. I have many yesterdays to remember, and my passionate spirit looks for their essence.

The appeal of creating art is to find and illustrate the essence of that which has great meaning for me. I don’t long for yesterday, but I carry that feeling of being a young dreamy adolescent girl with me. So I’ve delicately chipped away at the lyrics of McCartney’s song, creating a snippet of the past. The reminder isn’t transparent. It is an embodiment. Of this I strive as an artist.