ANN KEUPER, artist
Ann Keuper is a fiber artist living in Tucson, Arizona. Her tapestries are best described as ’woven paintings’ and use traditional and nontraditional tapestry techniques and materials.
She began her fiber art studies in Switzerland in 1973. In 1979, she received her Bachelor of Arts from Simmons College in Boston; she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Arizona in 1991.
After graduating, she became an artist-in-residence with the Arizona Commission on the Arts and taught the art of tapestry in schools throughout the state. She has also worked with at-risk children and mentally handicapped adults teaching tapestry. Between 1992 through 1998 she was a member of the Dinnerware Contemporary Art Gallery; she has exhibited her art throughout the Southwest. In 1996 Ann Keuper was principal artist to work on a grant-supported project entitled The Sonoran People’s Tapestry Project in conjunction with The Sonoran Institute and The International Sonoran Desert Alliance. She has taught as Adjunct Professor of Art at the University of Arizona and at Pima Community College. She has also presented many tapestry workshops teaching her own unique approach to weaving.
In 1999, Ms. Keuper was awarded a grant by the Pfizer Corporation to work with Kino Community Hospital in conjunction with their Transitional Long Term Care unit. The purpose of the project was to stimulate brain areas of cognition, emotion and motor skills in rehabilitating patients, ultimately producing a woven tapestry of their experience with illness and recovery.
For four years Ms. Keuper collaborated with the Arizona State Museum and the Gloria Ross Tapestry Center on a weaving project on the Pasqua Yaqui Reservation. She worked in the elementary school classroom teaching the art of tapestry with an interdisciplinary approach.
The Desert Weaving Workshop was an idea realized in the fall of 2004 in an old adobe house in Tucson. The business was a resource for handweaving and offered apprenticeships, classes, studio space and supplies for sale. The Workshop also hosted several tapestry workshops by nationally known artists.
In the fall of 2008, the business closed and Ms Keuper now works in her studio. She is working on a new series of work, weaving unusual plant fibers and naturally dyed wools and silks into landscapes inspired by the grasslands of Arizona.
