Debra Balchen

debraannbalchen@gmail.com
312-810-1111
https://www.debrabalchen.art/

Working in a variety of media and incorporating the rich cultural diversity discovered while living overseas for 2 decades, I enjoy using a figurative narrative as my primary language. I want to engage the viewer in a tactile sense, to seek an emotional connection through dynamic, shifting interpretations of traditional and alternative uses of materials.

Sculpting is a process of connection for me, working from life, the subjects expose their inner landscape, through gesture and expression. Vulnerability, the immediacy of the material and interpreting the beauty each life possesses, become the language that reaches out and excites.

Debra Balchen is a Chicago area artist who specializes in sculpture,drawing, painting and art glass. Debra was raised in Chicago, but has also lived in New York, Italy, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt. She studied art at the Art Students League of New York, the Kitengela Glass Studio in Kenya, the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and recently at The Florence Academy of Art, in Florence, Italy.

She has also taught numerous special drawing classes for The American Glass Guild Conferences and for ROMOMA Modern Art Museum in Kenya. Also, in Chicago, at Lillstreet Art Center, and now The Palette and Chisel, where she has been a happy member for many years. Coincidentally, I will be teaching right next door to MY own studio.