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Jeanne C. Wilkinson is an artist who has had numerous exhibitions nationwide, and an art critic who writes for various New York and international publications. All artworks on the site are by the author. She grew up next to the crystalline waters of Lake Superior in Duluth, Minnesota, and some time ago came to understand that the natural beauty that humans take for granted is no longer a given, that wilderness is shrinking, that animals and humans are engaged in a war for space that is being lost on all fronts. In the early 1970’s she went “back to the land,” moving from Minneapolis, where she had worked with the early organic food cooperatives, to a commune in rural West-Central Wisconsin. There, a dozen young people set out to save the world--some by farming and gardening, some by recreating stone-age customs and traditions living in tee-pees and sod huts. These two very different and often opposing counter-culture points of view made for some interesting, volatile communal meetings--prototypes for the gatherings of animals, both Wild and Domesticate, in the story of WEarth. The commune experience evolved into ten years of struggle as a dairy farmer, but eventually the trials of farming overcame its many rewards. The author felt a need to explore a deep affinity with art and writing that had been put aside during her rural quest, and so she returned to college to get an art degree at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, WI. A deepening involvement with art led to a move to New York City in 1987, the year of the Wall Street Crash, for a Master’s Degree in painting at Pratt Institute. Now living on a leafy street in Brooklyn, the author watches crows and pigeons outside her window while conjuring up the green world of WEarth. She has two adult sons living in Madison, Wisconsin. The author says, “Some time ago, I read a quote that said the greatest task of writing is to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. WEarth has been growing in my mind ever since.” |
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