May Roded

Born in Redlands, California, Karen is a painter and printmaker who has worked in Los Angeles since l959. Educated at Stanford (BA 1957), Otis (MFA 1959), and UCLA (Painting 1960), her early exhibitions include “Directorʼs Choice” at the Pasadena Art Museum, selected by Thomas Leavitt; “LA and Vicinity,” Los Angeles County Museum of Art; “Current Concerns” at LAICA, curated by Walter Hopps; “Imagination” at LAICA, curated by Llyn Foulkes; “Assemblage and Collage” at LAICA, curated by Hal Glicksman; Grandview Gallery at the Womenʼs Building and “Expo/International” at the Museo del Inah, Oaxaca, Mexico. She has exhibited at the LouWe Gallery, The Brand Library, Boston University, Cal Tech, Cal State Luckman Fine Arts Gallery, Cal Poly Pomona, UC Davis, The Berkeley Art Center, Occidental College, The LA Municipal Art Gallery, The Armory Center for the Arts, the Platt Gallery, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, and many others. In Spring of 2012, she exhibited monotypes with Linda Lyke in a two person exhibit at Century Books, Pasadena, CA. From l977 to 1997 Karen was Artist-in-Residence (CA Arts Council) and Faculty at Pacific Oaks College where she created the Childrenʼs Art Studio, a multidisciplinary teaching studio for 200 children and student-teachers. Over the years, Karen initiated and developed art programs on several campuses, including Westridge School, and Pasadena Alternative School. Among the art spaces she created, “The Art Studio” at Pacific Oaks is documented in Design Over Time (Stine 1994). Karen was included in the 2010 encyclopedia, L.A. Rising: SoCal Art before1980 (Kienholz 2010). 

I work in various media with a particular focus on printmaking and investigate mixing materials, the use of multiples, and drawing. I love the intended marks and layers of color and textures inherent in printmaking. Like the natural structures I use as subject matter, printmaking has a method and stages that are not always recognizable to the untrained eye. For me, the process has to build on itself to create the final image.Teaching is also very important to me, and I have been involved in arts education and public programming for 15 years. I have taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Fullerton Museum Center in Orange County, and the City of Los Angeles, Department of Recreation and Parks. I am currently the Senior Curator of Public Engagement at the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles.