Christine French

christinefrench@mac.com

artthingsbychrisfrench.com

etsy.com/shop/Basketswithattitude

Christine French is a retired art teacher from Ohio.  She has taught art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Erie Art Museum, Cuyahoga Community College, Art House, Lakeland Community College, Lake Erie College, Chautauqua  Institution, Jamestown Audubon Sanctuary, and Notre Dame College.
Some of her teaching awards are TICA, at the Art Institute of Chicago, Power of Art: A Day with Robert Rausenberg in Washington DC, five Martha Holden Jennings Foundation Grants, Ashland Oil Teacher Achievement Award, three Ohio Arts Summer Media Fellowships, and the Northeast Regional Ohio Arts Education Association Outstanding Teacher. 
A graduate of Kent State University with a BFA in Fine Arts and Art Education, Chris also holds M.A. in Crafts, and a M.F.A. in Sculpture from Kent State Graduate School. 
Besides teaching, Chris has been a producing artist for 40 years. In 2004 she was honored with a sculpture award by the Women’s Pen and Brush in New York City.  In 2005, HGTV’s Crafters Coast to Coast featured her sculptural baskets called “Vessels with Attitude”. In 2007 she was  in the Nov/Dec issue of Fiber Arts Magazine.  In 2008 she was featured in the Focus: Fiber Book by the Cleveland Museum of Art, and was published in Beyond Basketry 2008. She has been an artist resident in Poland, Hungary, Greece, the Big Island of Hawaii, and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Oxbow.
Chris considers herself a multimedia artist who favors re purposing art materials to create up scaled art. The variety of art processes that she utilizes in her work are watercolors, encaustics,  basket making, collage, dichroic glass, polymer clay and fiber  jewelry, glass  collage, ceramics, sculpture, photography, new media, and illustration.
Locally in North East and New York you can see her work at Grape Discovery Center, the Grape Country Market Place, Boston Bean Cafe, GlassGrowers Gallery,  September Moon, House of the Potter, and Surroundings Gallery In Oberlin,Ohio her work is at Ginko Gallery.
Since moving to North East she is an active board member of the North East Arts Council where she teaches watercolors, beach glass jewelry, and zentangle to adults. 
She is on the Design Committee of the Downtown North East where she designed the grape banners in town.