Erika Osborne received her BFA from the University of Utah in painting and drawing and her MFA from the University of New Mexico. Erika’s artwork deals with cultural connections to place and environment with specific interest in the forests of the West and Southwest. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Phoenix Art Museum, the Palo Alto Art Center, the Nevada Museum of Art, the Koumi Kogen Museum in Nagano, Japan and the Prof. Nestór Agúndez Martinez Casa de Cultura, in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Erika has also been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a recent Fulbright fellowship where she completed a series of paintings about fire in the Sierra de la Laguna, Mexico. Her work has been highlighted in five books surveying the evolution of land and environmental art in the West. Erika has also been a contributing author for books and journals such as Making the Geologic Now: Responses to Material Conditions of Contemporary Lifeand Arts Programming for the Anthropocene: Art in Community and Environment. Erika’s work has been featured in national publications along with international art magazines such as New American Paintings, Art Papers, Sculpture Magazine and Southwest Art Magazine. Erika is a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Colorado State University and lives with her husband, Tracy Stuckey, and their children in Fort Collins, Colorado.