Kay WalkingStick

Walking Stick was born in Syracuse New York, but her mother moved her daughter from Oklahoma before she could become acquainted to her father’s side of the family. Walking Stick’s unique upbringing outside her cultural base has influenced her artwork, which explores identity, and more often, landscapes. In 1959, she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Beaver College and in 1975 a Masters of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute. Walking Stick was a professor at Cornell University from 1988 to 1990, and then again from 1992 to 2005; she retired as a full professor of drawing and painting. She has won several awards including: a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1983; a Joan Mitchell Foundation award in 1995; a National Honor award for Achievement in the Arts from the Women’s Caucus for Art in 1996; and a Lee Krasner award for lifetime achievement from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2011.