About Karen Kopacz
Artist, Designer & Collaborator
This is What I Love: Being in nature, art and design, process, bringing good ideas to world, building relationships, and finding ways to bring them all together in community.
Gathering people together in creative practice has always been part of my path. Loose Leaf Project is another version of it. Connective work can happen anywhere and some of my favorite collaborative moments happen spontaneously. All that matters is that two or more people show up for each other with a willingness to ask, listen, explore ideas, and keep showing up. Still, place and environment can shape experience and practice in meaningful ways. As an artist, I am always looking for new ways to collaborate. As a designer and consultant, my work with artists, small businesses, and organizations is evolving to include new approaches to creative ideation in nature-based creative development sessions.
A Long History of Art, Design, & Magazine-Making
Karen Kopacz, Artist & Writer
Karen Kopacz is an artist, writer, and designer and brand developer (Design for the Arts, LLC) with a long history of artistic collaborations and project leadership in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. She works with small and local businesses, artists, nature-based and environmental organizations, university programs, and non-profit publications and has partnered with leaders to strategically and creatively accomplish goals for over 25 years.
Karen has been the designer for Hand Papermaking since 2017, and is the design and print director for this globally-acclaimed art and paper-making journal, published biannually.
Her photography has been published in Parabola Magazine.
In 2022, she completed the Big Woods, Big Rivers Master Naturalist program and became a Minnesota Master Naturalist Volunteer. She is working toward establishing a creative workspace on a 5.5-acre woodland lot alongside the Namekagon River, a Wild & Scenic River in Northern Wisconsin.
Karen has been a musician, a mobile art gallery curator, and SXSW Interactive Festival panel member for Fostering New Culture on the Internet. She developed and was director of Mental Contagion, an arts & literature online magazine featuring a global community of arts and culture creators. From 2000 to 2008, she collaborated with artists and writers to publish interviews and features for 86 issues.
Karen is a graduate of Columbia College, Chicago, Bachelor of Arts (1994) with a Fine Arts major and Creative Writing minor. To see a list of exhibitions, articles, residencies, workshops, and community engagement visit Catalog of Works.