Presenter: Interviews on Stage – Sunday
Born and raised on her family’s Montana ranch where the Great Plains rise up to meet the Rocky Mountains, Dr. Edrienne (Cindy) Kittredge has lived and worked across the US before finding her way home.
Kittredge studied at the College of William and Mary, Arizona State University, the University of Montana, and Montana State University. She has received a doctoral degree, has studied with the Sirolli Institute and done independent study and research in England and Wales.
Applying her knowledge of cross-cultural communications, she has worked for corporations in the retail world, as an Assistant Director in Marquette University’s (WI) foreign student program, and has taught humanities and literature on the college level (MT, WI, and AZ). As Executive Director of the History Museum (Great Falls), she shepherded its development to its current location and size.
She served as Folk Arts and Market Development Specialist for the Montana Arts Council where she developed the Montana Circle of Traditional and Folk Artists. Most recently her work has involved helping artists across the Northwest and Upper High Plains. Created from her research and working knowledge of the arts and humanities, her business (My Artrepreneur Program) is currently in its twentieth year of helping artists in all mediums build sustainable businesses in art.
Returning to the Northern Plains has allowed her to utilize her academic background and required her knowledge from her lifetime in the traditional arts, her abilities to communicate across cultures, as well as her teaching and community-based action work, her training in entrepreneurship and cultural resource management. She sees our cultural and physical landscapes as interwoven forces that require both nurturing and expression through each of our unique voices.
As a writer and fiber artist, she understands the artist’s perspective. Her innovative research in how humans learn from and use their cultural and physical landscapes creatively has led to her authoring Artrepreneurship, Framing a Boundless Horizon, Unbounded Horizons, Crossing Bird Creek, and From the Corners of My Mind. She blogs about art, cultural landscapes, and the intersecting spaces at elkittredge.com.
Inspired by her six-generation Montana family and its connections to the land, Kittredge lives on the family ranch where she writes and revels in the sunsets over the Rocky Mountain Front and Square Butte.