Wendy Blickenstaff is a community Builder artist. She works with the community at large on art projects, art education, fundraising, social awareness, and good works. She has partnered with nonprofits, shelters, churches, schools, and cities to create a common good. Her practice includes hand-pulled prints made with etching presses, book and healthcare curriculum illustrations, installation work with fabric, guerrilla-style art, murals, painting, sculptures, and mazes. Wendy's work is figurative and based on human psychological themes. She pushes the boundaries of the art experience by presenting and sharing her work in unique ways. She feels that art can be an experience that creates insight and promotes thought and creativity within the viewer. She is always striving to connect with people on an authentic and deep level.
Wendy Blickenstaff was born in Cambridge, New York, grew up in Twin Falls, Idaho, and lived in California for twenty years. In 1994 She acquired a bachelor's degree in studio art from California State University Fullerton. In California, Wendy was a display artist, an instructor at the Academy of Art College in San Fransisco, a muralist, and commissioned painter. She spent six months abroad in chile painting in 1996. In 2005 she moved to Boise, Idaho, with her husband and two daughters. Wendy was a practicing studio landscape painter, adjunct art teacher, and stage display designer at the Cathedral of the Rockies until 2014 when she began to seriously work on her second degree at Boise State University. In 2017 she had an artist in residency at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy. Upon her return, she finished up her bachelor's of fine art in printmaking from Boise State University. She is currently working on a masters degree in clinical mental health counseling.
Wendy is presently a practicing studio artist in Boise Id. She has been working within the healthcare field and in the past at a critical care behavioral health hospital. She now is working with disabled youth in addition to her art practice. In 2024 Wendy published a mental health book with Vashti Summerville written to help struggling youth and their parents. Wendy was the books illustrator. The book features over 40 of her images. She has given some therapeutic art workshops presenting printmaking and mental health coping skills. She enjoys opening her studio up to the public. The book "Letters From the Edge of Modern Parenting" can be found online at Barns & Noble, Amazon, and Bookshop. org and at Rediscovered Books sellers in Boise. link is on Showingupbetter.com
