ARTIST BIO

Karen Ness is an accomplished Chicago-based calligraphy artist. Always drawing letters in childhood, as an art student at the University of Illinois, Karen fell in love with lettering and began a lifelong pattern of study with some of the most prominent names in the calligraphic world, study she will continue until she can no longer lift a pen.

 

Ness won the 2022 Newberry Library Purchase Prize Award. Her work has been published in Letter Arts Review, Bound & Lettered and The Letter, and has been exhibited at The Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy in Moscow, at Chicago's Newberry Library, South Shore Arts, and at many other galleries and libraries. Her work can be found in private and public collections in the US, Canada, Europe, Russia and Israel.

 

Karen has taught in the United States and at Calligrafest in St Petersburg, Russia. Before the pandemic, for five consecutive years Ness taught multiple workshops in Israel. She is an active member of the Chicago Calligraphy Collective. For the last 15 years, Karen serves as the CCC’s Workshop Director. 

 

When not creating letter- or text texture-based works, Karen enjoys one of her favorite activities—flying her single engine airplane.