Jean Ellen Wilder, Featured Speaker, January 2006 Meeting

BIOGRAPHY

A modern gypsy born into a Navy family, photographer and poet Jean Ellen Wilder draws inspiration from her surroundings, whatever and wherever they may be. Her formal education resulted in a degree in Art History, with a special interest in Photography as an art form.

She was Coordinator of Education at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts for seven years and, from 1993 to the present, has taught four to six workshops per year in the Polaroid Transfer & Emulsion Lift processes. For approximately five years she curated art shows at the Hill Street Café in Oceanside, and is currently a member of the Photographic Arts Group (PAG) in North County. Her own creative work has been juried into exhibits at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, the Cannon Art Gallery in La Costa, and the Irvine Fine Arts Center.

For the last few years Jean Ellen has been collecting books that feature the combination of photographic images and poetry, and she is planning a similar endeavor with some of her own images and poems. Her poetry has been included in the annual Magee Park Anthology and, although longer poems are included in her work, she tends to favor the Haiku form, perhaps as a result of a four year stay in Japan while in high school.

Jean Ellen will share some of her photography and poetry in her presentation.