By Janet Richardson-Baughman
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Crossroads A-67" by Jan Richardson-Baughman is a pastel drawing on paper. It is signed in the lower right corner and titled in the lower left, both in pencil. The work is framed and matted with off-white acid-free mat board. The drawing depicts a landscape of what looks like a country road or field. Bright green grass populates the foreground with a puddle of blue water, while a barrier of brown separates the green from the yellow fields beyond. Red trees occupy the middle ground and background, while the cloudy sky is a soft shade of blue.
Art size: 16" x 12"
Framed size 29 3/4" x 26"
A move to an eighty-acre farm in Western Michigan from Detroit suited Janet Richardson Baughman to a tee. She and her three siblings loved country life, and relished the many humorous adjustments to their new surroundings. The one-room schoolhouse she attended, for example, contrasted sharply to her earlier city school. Sports programs had been fairly sophisticated in the city. Rural sports consisted of her teacher piling everyone in her car, including the trunk, and then driving the children to another one-room schoolhouse for games. When Janet reached the sixth grade, a chapter in American history closed because all of the one-room schoolhouses were annexed by the nearest cities, but that unusual educational experience is something Janet fondly remembers.
Growing up in a family that was very artistic, it is not surprising that Janet loved drawing. She and her brothers and sisters would make Christmas decorations for the Christmas tree and had ongoing art projects all year long. Her architect father was an artist in his free time. As the children have become adults, they are all involved in artistic endeavors from carving to sculpture.
Janet's high school years were spent riding and showing her horses. "That was my life," she says. Living on the farm allowed her freedom to indulge her love of animals including the dogs that were so special to her. Active in 4H, Janet became an accomplished seamstress and an excellent cook. She took no art classes in high school although she sometimes helped her father with drafting.
Starting college with the intention of majoring in speech and drama, Janet took an art class only because it was required. She found the art classes so appealing that she took one after another. Eventually, having taken every art class offered, the university had to design independent studies for her.
With her beloved horses back on the farm, Janet discovered a new passion, and that was ceramics. First working as a waitress during college to earn income, Janet later became a Student Assistant and lived at the Ceramics Studio. As an assistant, she would make clay and glazes, fire the kiln, and assist the instructor however she could. At first, she had planned to become a high school teacher, but she was encouraged to earn her graduate degree and pursue her artistic endeavors, in addition to teaching. Janet graduated in 1975 with a BFA in Ceramics and Weaving from Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, MI.
Following her mentor's advice, she went to Indiana State University in Indiana for her graduate work where she studied under Dick Hay...
Category
1990s Contemporary Art by Medium: Crayon
