Cheri Owen, Air Force veteran, President of the Southern California Regional Group, and a blind student in the California State University system (Long Beach campus) in the field of Studio Arts, has been awarded the Dale M. Schoettler Scholarship for Visually Impaired Students.
Schoettler was a successful business professional who lost his sight during the last year of his life. Through his financial support stemming from a desire to give visually impaired students a helping hand in achieving their college aspirations, the California State University Foundation created the scholarship that Cheri has earned through her academic performance and personal accomplishments.
“Congratulations on your perseverance and this significant achievement,” Wendy Chavira Garcia told Cheri in the letter informing her of the scholarship. “We are proud and honored that you are part of the California State University system.”
Cheri began her new semester this past Monday, working currently with mixed media (wood and ceramics, coupled with printmaking) in her program. She is the first blind student, and in fact the first student overall, to help the University system develop a post-Bachelor’s Degree program. She now believes that her current situation was “all meant to be” and more than coincidence, as Marianne McGrath, Chair of the Art Department in which Cheri is learning and working, taught art at the Texas School for the Blind several years ago.
Cheri is also working on a commission for the Santa Barbara Arts Council that involves a 7 X 9-foot mural that she is carving and will attach to wood herself.
The mixed media art Cheri produces is ceramic sculpture, functional wares, and prints. With a penchant for tactile media like ceramics and printmaking, she aspires to share her work with a universe she can no longer see—as a means of touching people emotionally through deep, piercing, poetic phrases, and through the beauty of trees, birds, and the natural world.
Cheri enjoys being in a space for an extended period to become mindful and intimately aware of her creative practice, and to learn about an unfamiliar environment through a touch-centered approach. She allows the environment to percolate into her work through bark, branches, trees, wind, deer, the warmth of the sun, grass, morning dew, the silence of the evening, and the chirping of birds. She also listens to all of nature’s universe as if it were speaking to her directly, always open to feel, taste, hear, and touch.
Two years ago, Cheri was selected to be part of the prestigious Individual Artist Fellowship Program with SVCREATES (Silicon Valley Creates) and the California Arts Council. She has served as both a client and a Board member for Guide Dogs for the Blind.
