Posted on 3rd July 2012 in 
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July First Thursday is a fundraiser for Portland Public Schools featuring Anna Magruder and the Dreaming Zebra Foundation!
The Dreaming Zebra Foundation is a non profit organization that ships used art supplies or new art supply donations to low income schools that can’t afford them. This summer they’ve been asked by Portland’s 19 lowest income public schools to help for this coming Fall with raising money! however we don’t have enough monetary donations to get the supplies to the schools. Local artist, Anna Magruder, is excited to help us raise the funds.
Who’s Anna?
www.annamagruder.com
There is no place she’d rather be than creating art in Portland.. Born in Dallas, Texas Magruder spent her early years in various parts of the southwest before settling in Allen, Texas. After high school, she headed off to college at the University of North Texas to major in graphic design with a minor in philosophy and took a detour to explore life in Los Angeles and Palo Alto. After graduating from college, she traveled and worked as a graphic designer, moving from Texas to Colorado and eventually migrated North to Portland where she opened her own graphic design business in 2005.
In 2009, Magruder decided to take a leap of faith and leave the routine and security of her design business to focus on what has since become her passion—oil painting and illustration. Her favorite subjects are people and animals and whatever lies between. Drifting between realism and surrealism she recreates vintage America, imagines the lives and stories of strong women, captures the dormant kookiness or sweet serenity of a local cat, or just explores the emotional color of faces in the crowd.
For her, art is as much about building community as it is about process and refining technique. She takes every opportunity she can to get out and see what others are doing at art openings, local festivals, craft shows and galleries. And seeks to do my part by hosting a small artists group, attending other groups or heps organize and promote craft shows. She also love thrift stores and everything vintage, hanging with her cats Sesame and Juneau, and listening to my husband talk on and on about all things cycling.
