About

About Dawn P

PROCTOR ART

About the Artist

Dawn Bedore Proctor became interested in art as a young child and this interest was encouraged and supported in high school by her art teacher, Frank Vaitkus (the influence of a dedicated and innovative mentor during a child’s young years cannot be underestimated). With no family support, Dawn worked jobs in summers and after school. Thanks to loans and grants, Dawn went on to major in Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, continuing to work to finance her college education.
Dawn is the grand-niece of sculpture Sydney Bedore, who started working in a brick yard in Green Bay, WI until he could afford to classes at the Art Institute in Chicago. He has been quoted as saying, “Art is a rich man’s game.” He then went on to enroll at New York City’s Beaux Arts, one of the most prestigious art schools of the era. Bedore’s first work was a statue of Theodore Roosevelt at Benton Harbor, Michigan unveiled in 1922. His next work “The Spirit of the Northwest”, in 1931 was erected at the entrance to the Green County Courthouse in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The statue is noteworthy for the inclusion of three figures, a French Missionary, the first governor of the old Northwest Territory and a member of the Indian Outgamie tribe. His next work was a statue of Jean Nicolet recently moved to a Wisconsin State Park near Green Bay. He went on to place a major work in St. Petersburg, Florida. In 1917, Bedore married Lou Mathews, an artist in her own right with murals in the archive of the Louvre in Paris. Sydney Bedore died in 1955, the year Dawn was born.*
Technically, Dawn’s love for acrylic paint is fueled by the vast array of vivid colors available and the ability to work large areas with energy and speed. Acrylic glues and sprays permit the insertion of images, some drawn, some borrowed and altered. Some paintings were completed in a matter of hours. For others, the completed work evolved to be much different from when it was started…the emotional journey captured literally in the layers of paint and paper.
Throughout her life, Dawn has continued to express herself in painting as well as sculpting and fabric art, continuing to experiment with mixed media, finding release through the expression and acceptance of times
good and bad.

*Source material – The Green Bay Press-Gazette, Feb. 16, 1998

Dawn-P

Biography

Dawn Bedore Proctor was born into a modest family of six children, is native to Wisconsin and has lived in the vibrant Madison community for more than forty years. She graduated from Wilmot High School in Wilmot, Wisconsin in 1973, the first child to complete high school in her family. In the fall, she moved north to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in Art and Political Science. A full-time working student, she continued to apply herself to both work and studies, taking 13 years to achieve a degree that reflected and integrated both her interests, a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture.
She snagged several internships at the University including Manager of the University’s Horticulture Garden, Manager of the University’s Botany Garden, and a research internship in the Agronomy Dept. Her advisor, Professor Edward Hasselkus, was widely known and respected in the horticulture industry.
She also spent one summer interning at the Winnebago State Mental Health Hospital and Prison in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, as Assistant to the Superintendent of Grounds. There, she was profoundly impressed by the role that tending plants and flowers had in the general well-being of patients, prisoners, staff, and visitors. This experience cemented her interest in and commitment to the contribution that public gardens can make to any community.
She moved to Phoenix, Arizona where she was employed by Pointe Resorts, a collection of four star hotels and condominiums in their on site nursery and retail store. She married and gave birth to one son. When her husband was sentenced to ten years of incarceration for drug possession, she divorced and moved with her son back to Madison, Wisconsin, where she struggled with her own alcohol and drug addiction, entering out-patient rehab and joining the thriving network of Alcoholics Anonymous. She would remain active in AA for the next thirty-nine years and to this day.
As a sober, single parent, Dawn was grateful to receive state assistance for housing and food while she foraged for funds to resume her education. She wrote and received a grant from a private, local Womans Club to return to the University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate school in their Landscape Architecture program. This program was nationally recognized for its philosophy favoring the preservation and restoration of native landscapes and use of indigenous plants.
Offered a summer job as a gardener at Olbrich Botanical Gardens on Madison’s eclectic and diverse east side, she would remain there for the next fifteen years, expanding and applying her now deep conviction that a connection to the natural beauty and science of gardening and plants had a positive effect on the quality of life for people of all ages and abilities (see Career). Following a severe back injury, she was forced to retire on disability in 2002, reinforcing through her own experience the invaluable contribution of and vital need for both financial and physical accessibility in public parks and gardens.
Retirement did not diminish her creative passions and provided Dawn with the opportunity to pursue her dormant interests in both writing and painting. Her accomplishments went on to include published poetry, award winning short stories, and a non-fiction book on the subject of teenage alcohol and drug addiction. Her art pieces would yield three solo shows and several group exhibits. Her works have been donated to non-profit fundraisers including the Wisconsin Womens Network, the Goodman Community Center, The Rape Crisis Center, and support for Madison’s own enthusiastic and organized LGBT community.
When her son and only child inherited his own alcohol and drug addiction at age 13, Dawn found herself in a new advocacy position, lobbying for the development of more accessible and affordable treatment programs and the urgent need to reform the criminal justice system in such a way that addiction is treated as the fatal disease that it is and not a reason to incarcerate already suffering addicts. (see Book)
In her 60’s, Dawn returned to UW-Madison as a full-time senior auditor in the Department of Communications studying both Film and Television Industries. This led to the development of her first short film non-fiction screenplay adapted from her award-winning short story “The Ride Home.” (See Short Stories & Screenplays). Dawn has also been inspired to explore the development of experimental films using 8mm and 16mm antique film cameras and vintage commercial and home film reels. The joy of working and learning in a new artistic media has offered exciting new artistic opportunities in her later years.

Career

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Dawn Bedore Proctor graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983 with honors (Phi Kappa Phi) and a Bachelor of Science degree in Horticulture. After working for five years in the nursery industry in Phoenix, Arizona, she became one of a few women certified as an Arizona Nurseryman. Through her retail and landscaping work, she became increasingly aware of the dysfunctional sales and application of non-native plants and chemicals in the Phoenix metropolis and of the urgent need for migrating residents to adapt to the natural landscape to preserve precious water and the beauty of the desert.
She returned to UW- Madison to pursue a graduate degree in Landscape Architecture with an emphasis on the knowledge and use of native plants under Prof. Dale Morrison.
On summer sabbatical, she was recruited by Olbrich Garden’s director, a city of Madison employee, to establish the not-for-profit Olbrich Botanical Society. For several years Dawn served as sole employee of this fledgling organization intended to provide financial support to operate and improve this publicly owned, underdeveloped parkland.

Over the next fifteen years, Dawn grew the Olbrich Botanical Society to a vital organization with a ten-member staff and one-million-dollar annual operating budget. Hundreds of volunteers were recruited to perform duties the city was unable to fund. She implemented and directed capital campaigns that included the construction of the 10,000 sq. ft. tropical Bolz Conservatory, a complete renovation of 13 acres of specialty gardens accessible by wheelchair and tram, the installation of the Thai Pavilion, the (largest of its kind outside of Thailand and a gift to the University of Wisconsin from the Thai government), and the purchase of an additional 13 acres for future garden expansion.

Services grew to include professional volunteer training, free Library and plant Information hot line, innovative education programs for school children and adults, art exhibits, music and dance performances. Most importantly, thanks to a coordinated fundraising effort that expanded to include special events, foundation and corporate grants, a membership program, public relations, the Olbrich Endowment Fund, and the generosity of thousands of individuals, the Gardens remain FREE and OPEN to the public, becoming recognized by Horticulture Magazine as one of the ten most beautiful public gardens in America. Currently, the Olbrich Botanical Society has more than 3,000 members and the Gardens welcomes more than a quarter of a million visitors each year, serving people of all ages, interests and abilities.

Dawn graduated from the National Planned Giving Institute and became an active member of the National Society of Fundraising Executives (N.S.F.R.E.) and of what was then known as the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta (AABGA)* AABGA represents more than 400 public gardens and arboretums. She was a frequent presenter at AABGA national conferences all over America and Canada on topics including: The History of the Development of Olbrich Gardens: from city dump to Public Park, Orchestrating Volunteers to Conduct a Successful Capital Campaign, Developing a Donor Recognition Policy, and Forming a Planned Giving Program. She has had papers published in AABGA’s monthly journal “The Public Garden” including:

More Gifts for Our Gardens, July, 1996

Tracking Donors and Dollars: A small Midwest Garden builds an integrated financial information system, 1993

Other publications include:

“Public Gardens Grow Strong Communities”
HMS Beagle Log, Washington, D.C. April 1997

“Systematic Plan yields Big Rewards for Small Non-Profit”
Give and Take, a publication of the Sharpe National Planned Giving Institute, November 1996

“Development Takes Root at Olbrich Gardens”
Madison Professional Chapter of Women in Communications, December 1991

Dawn was ultimately elected to the National Board of Directors of the AABGA in 2000 where she developed a nation-wide Development and Marketing Campaign for the organization which included changing the name from AABGA to the ”Public Gardens Association” (P.G.A.)* which it is known by today. She continues to lobby for a National Public Garden Day where admission would be free to discovery these treasures in your city and across America.

No greater mistake can be made than the belief that taste and esthetic sense is a monopoly of the merely well-to-do or purely the product of formal schooling. The park proposed is intended primarily to bring back into the life of the worker confronted by the dismal industrial tangle…something of the grace and beauty that nature intended us all to share. This park above all others, with a warmth and strength of love – of love of all the working world- should hold out its arms, should invite them to itself, until its naturalness and beauty enter their lives.

Michael B. Olbrich, Attorney at Law, 1921 From a speech proposing a park and garden site near Lake Monona, Madison, Wisconsin

Source: Olbrich Gardens, A Dream Fulfilled
A History of Olbrich Gardens, 1916-1991 (33 pages)
Author: Timothy Heggland
Publisher: The Olbrich Botanical Society
Funded by a grant from the Dane County Cultural Arts Commission, 1991
Project Director: Dawn Bedore Proctor

“Dawn Bedore Proctor has the gratitude of the Olbrich family for helping so much to make Olbrich Park and Gardens the reflection of a living personality who did indeed have a dream”.

A personal note to Dawn from Michael Olbrich, Jr. Dec. 28, 1997