Painter/arts educator
Born 1949
Early Days:
1980 ● Bonfoey Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio: Private collector contracts to acquire 108 paintings
1982 -1987● Own and operate Signet Gallery in Murray Hill Art District, Cleveland
1984 ● Cleveland Museum of Art ‘May Show’ selects paintings ‘The View’ and ‘Sun-Day’ for exhibition -
1984 ● The Owensboro Museum Purchase Award: ‘Sun-Day’
1985 ● Bonfoey Gallery: 20/20: A Survey of New York and Cleveland Artists
1985 ● The Cleveland Clinic acquires paintings ‘Treelogy’ and ‘Silent Observation #2’
1987 ● The Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine, Cleveland, OH. selects painting ‘Silent Observation’ for cover art March
1987 ● Works selected for The Cleveland Museum of Art ‘May Show’
1987 ● Butler 51 st Midyear, The Butler Institute of American Art selects ‘Mt. Hope’
1988 ● BP World Headquarters acquires ‘Red Sky at Night’
1987 ● University Hospital, Cleveland, OH acquires ‘Structured Silence’ and ‘Series of Silence’
1993 ● The Cleveland Foundation acquisition of ‘Silent Observation #22’
1993 ● Northern Ohio Live Magazine feature article ‘Painting Over Scars/ Brush with Mortality’ March
2001● Author and illustrate Twenty Two Prayer Poems for Care Givers inspired by years of volunteer work with hospice
2003, 2005 ● Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association, Peninsula, OH. awards NEA grants funded ‘Artist in Residence’ position
Recent Solo Exhibitions:
2006 Visual Arts Center/Tidewater Community College Portsmouth, VA
2004 Anne C. Fisher Gallery Washington, DC.
2004 Kane Marie Gallery Virginia Beach, VA
2003 Art Metro Gallery Cleveland, OH
2003 Rotunda Gallery/Meredith College Raleigh, NC
2001 Art Metro Gallery Cleveland, OH
Two Person Exhibition:
2006 Hampton University Hampton, VA
Recent Group Exhibition/Invitational:
2008 Healing for the Healers Cleveland, OH
2007 After Life Charles Taylor Art Center Hampton, VA
2007 ‘By Our Heirs Forever’ CACV Virginia Beach, VA
2006 ‘Jingles’ Anne C. Fisher Gallery Washington, D.C.
2006 ‘From Angels to Zeppelins’ Shooting Star Suffolk, VA
2006 CACV Studio School Faculty Exhibition Virginia Beach, VA
2006 ‘The Art of ‘T’ Suffolk Museum Suffolk,VA
2006 ‘Thou Shalt Not’ TCC Visual Arts Center Portsmouth, VA
2005 ‘Home Sweet Home’/Shooting Star Gallery Suffolk, VA
2005 CACV Studio School Faculty Exhibition Virginia Beach, VA
2005 Artfull Mementos of a Writer’s Life/Heights Art Gallery Cleveland, OH
2005 "A Healers Art" Tri-C Gallery East Highland Hills, OH
2004 "Horizontal Brothers’ Shooting Star Gallery Suffolk, VA
2004 ‘Third Season’ Town Center Virginia Beach, VA
2004 CACV Studio School Faculty Exhibition Virginia Beach, VA
2004 ‘New Waves’ Contemporary Art Center Virginia Beach, VA
2004 The George Streeter Collection Cleveland, OH
2003 ‘Deep Hunger’ TCC Visual Arts Center Portsmouth, VA
2003 The George Streeter Collection/The Art Studio Cleveland, OH
2002 ‘Insights & Inspiration’/ Center for Being & Becoming Washington, D.C.
2002 Shooting Star Gallery Suffolk, VA
2002 A.L.C. Gallery / Virginia Beach Public Schools Virginia Beach, VA
2002 ‘Follow Your Moon’ / Shooting Star Gallery Suffolk, VA
2002 The George Streeter Collection/The Art Studio Cleveland, OH
2001 New Waves/Contemporary Art Center of VA Virginia Beach, VA
2001 The George Streeter Collection / The Art Studio Cleveland, OH
2001 Art Metro Gallery Cleveland, OH
Authored & Illustrated
- Twenty Two Prayer Poems for Care Givers
Published by Natural Press, Manitowoc, WI
Teaching and Workshops 2003-8:
Faculty:
Contemporary Art Center of Virginia
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Recent Residencies :
Kingston Elementary Virginia Beach, VA
Carrsville Elementary School Suffolk, VA
Hickory Middle School Chesapeake VA
The Art Studio, Center for Therapy Through the Arts Cleveland OH
Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Peninsula OH
Tidewater Regional Group Home Commission Portsmouth VA
Star of the Sea Regional School Virginia Beach VA
Salem High School Virginia Beach, VA
Contemporary Art Center of Virginia Virginia Beach, VA
‘Basics: Drawing & Painting/Contemporary Art Center of Virginia Virginia Beach, VA
Gifted Arts Program/Virginia Beach Public Schools Virginia Beach, VA
Nelson Elementary School/Artist in Residence YAV Newport News, VA
Taylor Elementary School/Artist in Residence YAV Norfolk, VA
Creativity Salon/Cuyahoga Valley National Park Peninsula, OH
Intern Workshop/ Cuyahoga Valley National Park Peninsula, OH
Moton Elementary School/Artist Workshop YAV Hampton, VA
Tarrant Elementary School. Artist Workshop YAV Hampton, VA
‘Birds of a Feather/Virginia Aquarium Virginia Beach, VA
‘Trip to Bountiful’ Women’s Retreat/CVNP Peninsula, OH
Artist in Residence/ CVNPA Peninsula, OH
Back Bay Bird Club Virginia Beach, VA
Nansemond-Suffolk Academy Suffolk, VA
Four Winds Camp Orcas Island, WA
Rawls Museum Arts VMFA Residency Courtland, VA
Biography listed in: Who’s Who in America 54 -59 th Edition 2000 – 2008
2000-2007 Published illustration:
Luna Calendar
2000 Commission Design: Smucker’s Jellies and Jams Fundraiser
2001 Commission Design: ‘Year 2000 Dietary Guidelines for Americans’ poster
2003 Commission Design: CVNPA ‘Towpath Trail Since 1993’ logo
CVNPA ‘Poets in the Park’ linocut triptych
2005 Commission Design: T shirt design YWCA, Norfolk, VA
2007 ‘The Special Ones’ CD cover and inset art TAO, Chesapeake, VA
2005 – Present: Volunteer and Board of Advisors with Tidewater Arts Outreach (TAO)
2001-2008 Articles, Mentions and Reviews:
Daily Break: Hospice Workers Poems Help Others
By Jacey Eckert/ Virginian Pilot October 9, 2001
Sacred Space Newsletter:
A Review of Twenty Two Prayer Poems for Care Givers Fall 2001
By Sara Wasserman, ATR
Daily Break: Best Bets: Virginian Pilot December 12, 2001
Port Folio Weekly: Keepers of the Piece by Betsy DiJulio December 2, 2003
Daily Break: Best Bets:
Anima Mundi at Kane Marie Gallery/ Virginian Pilot January 16, 2004
Port Folio Weekly: Anima Mundi:
The Paintings of Donna Iona Drozda
Kane Marie Fine Arts Gallery by Betsy DiJulio January 27, 2004
In The Studio/Art Letter: Contemporary Art Center Summer 2004
Daily Break: Best Bets / Virginian Pilot October 6, 2004
Pathways Magazine: cover art, article Anne C. Fisher PhD December 2004
Beacon: Birds of a Feather /Virginian Pilot February 2005
Daily Break: Museums &Galleries/ Virginian Pilot May 2005
Daily Break: Museums &Galleries/ Virginian Pilot January 26, 2006
Port Folio Weekly: Ten Convoluted Commandments February 14, 2006
ART Review: Terra Infirma: The Fragile Dance June 1, 2006
Teresa Annas / Virginian Pilot
Ticket Calendar, What’s Happening Today / Daily Press June 21, 2006
Life Made By Hand: MaryAnn Toboz Lifestyles 50+ August 2006
Issues of Faith: Betsy W. Rhodes / Virginian Pilot September 2, 2006
ART Review: ‘By Our Heirs Forever’ April 5, 2007
Teresa Annas Virginian Pilot
Sample Reviews:
Reprinted from New Art Examiner, Chicago - June 1988 (So long ago yet so poetic)
"Donna Drozda’s work can be conceived as a mythopoetic cycle of quest tale whose "hero" has become, in effect, the mind/inner and world/outer voyage itself. In Drozda’s epic narrative, the evolutionary history of humanity is retraced in miniature in the individual organism’s experience. Individual and collective humanity is represented in images of animals and landscapes bearing multitiered structures of epistemological, mythological, psychological, and socio-political levels of import.
The works themselves evolve through chapter-like series: hints latent in one painting or series become major themes in the next…
Simultaneously embodying both the intentional and the pathetic fallacies, these paintings provoke a visceral realization of the site of myth precisely as the intersection or
-John Byrum
Reprinted from The Cleveland Plain Dealer - March 9, 1992
"Whether the painting is a simple study or a more complex narrative in larger scale, Drozda places her gestural and symbolic stamp on everything she does. There is a familiar repetition of flowing waves and hair, spirals and infinity symbols, pools of water. Lunar stages. Diving figures and frogs, animals and snakes, Celtic glyphs and Drozda’s own indecipherable writing, like squiggles of visual energy that beg to be read.
-Helen Cullinan
Reprinted from Port Folio Weekly, Norfolk, VA - January 27, 2004
Vernon attributes the power of Drozda’s paintings not only to the potency of her content, but to the strength of her visual language and the compatibility between the two. The artist’s sense of color, design, rhythms and patterns, in combination with her complex and textured surfaces, result in "lively vibrating spaces in every square inch," enthuses Vernon. …These furtive underlying relief patterns create a physical and metaphorical topography that reflects and expands the subjects of the paintings, imbuing them with what Vernon describes as, "secret things to discover under the paint." …Visitors who allow themselves the time to explore these paintings in all their rich, but accessible, complexity are certain to be rewarded in many ways, including feeling soothed and buoyed in their own personal journeys through the world, spiritual or otherwise.
–Betsy DiJulio
Reprinted from The Virginian Pilot, Norfolk, VA – June 1, 2006
Everywhere, the work points to a connection to nature and to inner spirit as a way to be restored to wholeness. Here is an artist who has faced difficulties, found her way and is sharing her miracles through paintings.
It’s the kind of art that rubs off…you can take it in like a dream, and let it work on you.
-Teresa Annas
