ARTIST STATEMENT

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Deborah Whistler is currently the Program Director of Art at Spalding University. She received her BFA from Miami University in 1981 and her MFA with a concentration in printmaking from the University of Cincinnati in 1996.

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Deborah was born in Middletown OH and was raised in a small farming community outside of Oxford OH. Growing up, Deborah was fascinated with fairy tales and how the little girl in those stories could overcome fear and obstacles to face and slay the dragon. It wasn’t that these stories proved that monsters exist that fascinated her but that they convinced her that monsters could be beaten. “For me one pivotal moment was when I first watched the movie The Wizard of OZ. It was that dramatic shift between black and white to color that I connected with. It was in the imagination that all seemed possible. At 6 years old I realized that the man behind the curtain was a fraud and that the little girl and her misfit friends had the power to problem solve their way out of any sticky situation.”