DeAnna Skedel

Artist Statement:

I collage eco-prints to embody the legacy of women whose artistry was often expressed through labor and caregiving. These layered works capture knowledge, emotions, and insights, much like inherited stories or cherished recipes passed down through generations. My pieces reflect and challenge social expectations, weaving natural and human-made materials into visual narratives.

Using the natural dye technique of eco-printing, ink-making, drawing, and assembling, I build works that demand slowing down and engaging deeply with the material as well as the image. Found objects—such as photographs, paper scraps, stains, and pencil marks—merge with organic elements to form compositions requiring observation and reflection, as they come together to mirror the cyclical nature of seasons and life.

My work is driven by a desire to uncover and share the narratives embedded in places, plants, and objects, as well as the often-muted voices of women. Aspects of ourselves that we dismiss, deny, or are simply unable to recognize. The images are of the hidden, the frightening, the forbidden, and the parts too disturbing to face as well as goals, desires or aspirations. I see both natural and human-made objects as vessels for stories that inform and inspire. Through this practice, I envision these pieces as handed down through time- like a family or cultural recipe, grounding me in the present and guiding me through this third phase of my life—a phase marked by instinctual wisdom, intuition, and a deep connection to nature. I seek guidance from women and the natural world as I navigate these transitions.

Artist Bio:

DeAnna Skedel has been an artist and professor in Kansas City since 2002 and is currently an artist-in-residence at Englewood Arts in Independence, Missouri. Her eclectic studio practice is deeply intuitive—akin to cooking: a meditation, an infusion, and a slow maceration of ideas and materials.

She began exhibiting at the Ohio Craft Museum while still an undergraduate. Graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago expanded her practice into theater and international opportunities, including the US/UK Contemporary Cast Iron in Sculpture Project in England, Overflow/Fluids (LA Art Girls) at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and a native garden project in Voulx, France. In Kansas City, she has been an Avenue of the Arts recipient, participated in the Urban Culture Project, and was featured in The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum. She has also been active in the Kansas City chapter of the social justice organization Avodah.

A committed educator, Skedel received the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at Metropolitan Community College–Blue River, where students affectionately describe her as “some crazy combination of Mr. Miyagi and Bob Ross.”

Reflecting on her overlapping roles as artist, educator, and parent of neurodiverse teenagers, she writes:
“It feels like a kind of puberty of maturity—an acceleration of evolution beneath layers of responsibility and occasional societal invisibility.”

She cherishes the creative pause, seeing it as a space to reflect on matriarchal wisdom and the lessons passed down through generations.