D3/D4 is inviting KAC members to attend Open Mic! It takes place Tuesday, May 10, at 7:00pm via Zoom. Our featured reader is new D4 member, Holly Friesen. We look forward to this opportunity to get to know Holly and her writing.
How does Open Mic work?
7:00-7:10pm – we check in, sign up to read, greet each other and celebrate victories
7:10-7:30pm – our Featured Reader presents
7:30-7:55 – Readers share in order of sign-up. Plan on 3 minutes. If there is plenty of time, attendees will get a 2nd opportunity to read.
H. C. Friesen: K-State Graduate, author, illustrator, watercolorist, and teacher of the Joy of Drawing Classes is excited to announce her self-published books are now ready for reading!
Holly Catherine Friesen grew up surrounded by Kansas relatives who were musicians, artists, authors, and storytellers, so naturally, she loved to sing, draw and write. Ms. Holly earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Graphic Design and later Elementary Education from Kansas State University. She is a trained puppeteer, singer/songwriter, and watercolorist, and loves to draw especially with watercolor pencils. She saw the need for children to see the beauty of the natural world around them: the light, colors, shapes, and lines, and then be inspired to create what they saw. She created lessons for her class she calls “The Joy of Drawing from Real Life and Pictures”. Since 1994, she has been teaching children and adults to draw, paint, use pastel, and make original cards. She has always wanted to be an illustrator and children’s book writer, and to publish her poems and stories.
This year, her dreams are coming true. Her first self-published children’s book, with over 100 illustrations, along with students’ artwork from her Joy of Drawing Classes, Janey Olsen, Famous Artist of the Beach, has sold close to 100 copies in the first month. It showcases her method for teaching drawing in the location of the Atlantic Ocean on the Outer Banks of North Carolina through the eyes of 10-year-old Janey, who wants to hang her pictures in the family's booth at the area art show and become famous.
To see more of Ms. Holly’s watercolor cards, prints, and children’s books, view her website, HCFriesen.com. She has three grown daughters, five lively grandchildren and lives in the “Art House” in Kansas with her Russian Blue cat named Prussia. A few of her many writing awards: At age sixteen, her poem, “The Looking Glass,” about a cat who sees “The Other” in the mirror, was published in the Young Kansas Writers. Her short biography called Lestle Wilber Newcomer, the Kansas Man, won the Jesse Perry Stratford Award for Excellence in Historical Writing, presented by the Butler County Historical Society (1988).
For this short author's talk, Holly will talk about the inspiration for the characters in story, Janey Olsen Famous Artist of the Beach, the process of putting the self-published story together, read a few parts of the story, as well as show a few of the watercolor pencil drawings she and her students have done for the book.
RSS Feed