BRATTLEBORO — Visual artist Karen May Sorensen will be easy to recognize at ArtRageUs1 during June's Brattleboro Gallery Walk.
“I will be the one wearing a handmade papier-mâché stag horns and mask,” Sorensen says. “Already I had to get started on the papier-mâché early, since these things need time to dry and paint.”
For the month of June, Karen May Sorensen will be the featured artist at ArtRageUs1, an art collective that carries unique and affordable art and crafts by area artisans, as well as books and CDs by area authors and musicians.
Wearing stag horns and a mask may seem an unusual way to greet her public, but Sorensen is an unusual artist.
A 47-year-old painter and printmaker who has been schizophrenic since the age of 19, Sorensen considers her disability an essential facet of her personality and the work she creates. However, she also points out that not all people struggling with schizophrenia are the same.
“Like about only 30 percent of schizophrenics, I do not hear voices or hallucinate,” she explains. But because of her disability, Sorensen has limited hours of mental focus.
“I work on art during the precious hours of clear mental concentration I have in the morning,” she says. “My energy is good in the morning, and rather yucky and dismal anytime past noon. What energy and willpower I possess, I spend it all in making art. Everything in my existence points to one purpose, and this is to make art. If I am excited making my art, then the artwork contains a huge dose of positive energy.”
Because of her disability, Sorensen is able to produce only six to 10 large works a year. In these, she achieves remarkable effects through her expert manipulation of oil pastel sticks.
“Oil pastel sticks look like thick crayons,” she writes at the ArtRageUs1 website. “They have the softness of butter. The oil pastels I use are professional and their color is very bright. My brand was invented for Picasso to use. He told their inventor that he wanted something that he could use to draw on anything.”
According to Sorensen, people often ask her how she can get the tiny details in her work drawing with something so creamy and so fat in her fingers.
She says the secret is multiple layering.
“I do a layer of oil pastel and then let it dry for a week,” she writes. “Then I come back to the artwork and do a second layer. The art gets more complex with more detail. I let the second layer dry for a week. Then I return for a final third layer of color. The lightest parts of the art, and the darkest parts are emphasized on the third layer.
“Another feature of oil pastels is that they are semi-transparent. So, if I want bold color - and I do! - this layering technique builds up color saturation.”
Sorensen extensively writes about her art and displays her works, not only at the ArtRageUs1 website, but also both at her own website, www.karenmaysorensen.com, and her blog, Schizophrenia And Art (karensearchformeaning.blogspot.com).
“My blog gets a lot of traffic from around the world,” Sorensen says “And my website is gaining traffic too - that just went up last summer. There are only about five or six schizophrenic artists who can do work at the scale and complexity that is featured on my website.”
Because of her illness, Sorensen had to stop art school after one semester, and so considers herself self-taught. And she objects to the stigma that can result from generalizing about schizophrenia.
“The articles I read about schizophrenic people on Yahoo are so depressing,” she says. “Schizophrenics are characterized as killers, or people in jail. But my life is pretty good. I have a great marriage. My husband Mike and I just celebrated our 10th anniversary.”
Sorensen readily admits that her art owes its existence to the financial support of her husband.
“Mike Sorensen is a quality specialist at G.S. Precision here in Brattleboro,” she says. “In addition to providing a roof over my head and the food that I eat, my husband gives me free time to make art. It is not expected that I cook or clean. So what energy and willpower I possess, my husband lets me spend it all in making art. That is the generous marriage contract my husband and I arrived at.”
Sorensen feels that she was destined to share her life with the man she married.
“I have said I never have heard voices,” she says “That is mostly true. But when I was 16, just once, I heard a voice.
“It was evening and the lights were out and I was in bed ready to fall asleep. I had a boyfriend and I was thinking about him. I wondered if I would grow up and marry him. But it seemed also that there might be a couple of boyfriends before I married. In fact, I didn't even know if I would just have one marriage or more. You see, my parents were divorced and they had moved on to dating new people. Love can come and go.
“So in the darkness, I asked, what will be the name of my true love? Which man will, over a lifetime, be the most important love?
“And I heard a voice say 'Michael.' Then I feel asleep.
“From then on, my favorite man's name was Michael. I didn't think it was supernatural or anything, because it was just like having a favorite flavor of ice cream. But when I would date a man, I would think funny things about his name.
“I dated a Matthew who had a brother named Michael. And I wondered if Michael would be a better husband than Matthew. Then later I dated another man named Matthew and I thought did I hear the voice wrong? Matthew is awfully close to Michael. Am I meant to settle down with a Matthew?
“But I never did date a Michael.
“For two years, I knew my husband before we started to date. He was a friend, but I wasn't romantically interested in him. Secretly, he was in love with me. And everyone called him Mike. I really didn't know his true name. One day, he took a chance and wrote me a letter and told me he loved me. And he signed it Michael. And when I read the letter, and knew his true name, all of a sudden my heart beat funny and I was in a kind of shock. This was the Michael who the voice said would be my true love.
“In my husband's wedding band, we put an inscription. It reads 'a voice in darkness said “Michael.”'”