Mary LaCasse, Author, Sifting Through Gold

Mary LaCasse is a visual artist and educator and splits her time between Portland, Oregon and Danville, California.

After a dozen years of working in corporate design and advertising, she returned to fine arts in mid life and earned an MFA. She was awarded a teaching fellowship at the University of Oregon and then spent twenty years as an art and design instructor and administrator at Portland Community College.

Mary paints, draws, takes road trip pictures and adds new media when an idea presents itself. In recent years, her grandchildren have brought fresh energy into her studio and her artworks. “Play” has been a priority. She teaches workshops on intuitive mark making and “writing as image” when she is not traveling, hiking, gardening, or hanging out with her grandkids.

Her work is in private and public collections.

Note: Mary recently changed her name to LaCasse from Stupp-Greer. 

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the five precious women who have so generously shared their time, memories, enthusiasm, and hearts with me over our many years of friendship. May women of every generation feel empowered by your words and images, stories, and insights.

It is your gold that is contained in this book. Thank you for your legacy. 

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the family members who provided photographs, artwork, and their own tales of life with these women. Kirk, Alicia, and Elizabeth Jonasson, Mark and Jo Amy Roberts, and David Deutscher, your time, energy and conversations helped pull together the pieces of their stories. Bill Sewall, thank you for recognizing the beauty of well used hands, your thoughtful editing and overall support. I am grateful to Jeff Kell for his belief in the project from the very beginning, and for patiently and skillfully moving the taped together pages into a book format. A special thank you to Faith Emerson for her artistic eye and thoughtful design expertise that produced the final version of the book where text and image dance across the pages.

I want to thank calligrapher Marilyn Reaves for the lovely brushed lettering on the cover and inside pages of the book. To my friends and family, thank you for your encouragement as the seed for this idea grew and blossomed. A special thanks goes to my daughter Sarah, her husband Matt, and my grandchildren, Grant, Miles, and Tess Hagen, for helping (at the last minute) to copy, cut, and tape together the first draft of the nearly one hundred-page book. To Ardavan Onsori, I give thanks for his generosity and the use of the wonderful studio where I was able to “paint the pages” of the book across the walls.