Featured Artist Dawn Wohlford the BCA Featured Artist for January/February. Sculptural paper artist Dawn Wohlford discovered handmade paper during a National Art Educators conference in 1983.
After the conference, she returned to Truman State University and read everything she could find about the process and began experimenting with improvised equipment. After earning a BA in 1984, she attended Arizona State University to learn the finer points of the craft. Then she moved to Colorado where she became an apprentice to artist Raymond Tomasso.
She gave workshops in Vail and Leadville, and produced 150 sheets of nearly identical denim papers for a limited-edition book, Strange Papers, assembled and bound in Germany. She earned an MFA in sculpture from the University of Colorado in 1988. She moved back to her hometown in Iowa in 1998 where she became the Visual Arts Director for Quad City Arts, a nonprofit organization. She oversees two galleries and a public sculpture program. Additionally, she serves on the Acquisitions Committee for the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, teaches workshops on papermaking, and creates sculptural pieces using handmade paper and found or recycled materials.