Kari Stieglitz Black has a BS in education from Ball State University, and a BFA from Indiana University, as well her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has taught ceramics, painting, drawing, 2-D design and 3-D design. She has served on the boards of museums as well as local and regional arts organizations and has competed in local, regional, state and national competitions. From a very early age she’s loved anything art or wild (natural world). Color, design and beauty were inspired by her father’s flower gardens, and they both came to share a fascination with the Cosmos. Also of huge influence was her extended family’s social concerns for civil rights, justice and equality. All of those influences have come together in her art which thinks about color, beauty and design along with themes of social justice in the larger context of our place in the Cosmos. Humans have only recently been able to see themselves not as the masters of Earth, but as occupants in a tiny neighborhood called the Milky Way Galaxy which resides in a vast, complex, beautiful and fascinating Cosmos.