Pamela Gaard was born in Minneapolis, MN, in 1955 of Jewish-American, Turkish and Russian heritage. She went to art school for one year and then switched her professional interest to science. Along with her science career, she began exhibiting her art in 1998. She's worked in collage/assemblage, influenced by art brut and the alchemy of turning trash to treasure, and, more recently, as a painter.

Her small paintings are informed by memories, fantasies, obsessions, superstitions, and fears. Her pleasure in making art is partly pure invention, and partly a way to remember and re-remember events from the past. Her portraits are made from life in 2 hour sittings. They are intended, in the words of Arthur Danto, as “emblems through which we confer honor by preserving the likenesses of those portrayed . . . which can be channels for adoration.”

Select Exhibitions:
Kaunas Art Biennial, Kaunas, Lithuania
Art in Embassies Program, Vilnias, Lithuania (her last name was Schloff)
Galerie Hori, Konstanz, Germany
Ross Museum of Art, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH
Art on the Plains 7 – Plains Museum, Fargo, ND juror: Eleanor Heartney
Visible Fringe 2001 – Minneapolis Theater Garage, Minneapolis, MN
Lore Degenstein Gallery, Sulinsgrove, Pennsylvania
University of Alaska Art Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska
West Liberty State College Gallery, West Liberty, West Virginia
Flatland Gallery – Minneapolis, MN, (with James Michael Lawrence)
MN State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition, St. Paul, MN

Education:
2000 Split Rock Arts Program, University of MN, Scholarship (3 one-week sessions)
1999 – 2000 Quilt Surface Design Symposium, Athens, Ohio (Merit Scholarship Award – 2 one-week sessions)
1982 - 83 Graduate work (Science/Public Health), University of MN
1980 BS University of WI Stout (degree -- magna cum laude)
1978 – 80 Nursing undergrad, University of WI Madison (no degree)
1974 – 75 Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1 year)

Publications:
American Craft Magazine, Feb/Mar 2003, page 93
Surface Design, Surface Design Association, Fall, 2000, page 53
The Best in Contemporary Beadwork, Bead International 2000, Interweave Press, 2000, page 103
FiberArts, Altamont Press, Summer, 2000, page 59
Fiber Art Design Book Six, Lark Books, 1999, page 35
FiberArts, Altamont Press, Summer, 1999, page 16
Bead Art, Kalmbach Publishing, 1998, page 89