Kansas State University

MANHATTAN — Margo Kren's work as an artist is constantly evolving — she's moved from realism to abstraction, and employed many styles during her 45-year career. But while her style may change, she says her vision has remained constant: always engaging her viewers with the world at large.

Kren, a professor emeritus of art at Kansas State University, will discuss her art in the presentation "Observing and Artist: Margo Kren" at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19, at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art. The artist's talk is free and the public is welcome.

Kren joined the university in 1971 and earned the Distinguished Graduate Faculty Teaching Award in 1989. In 1995 she became the first woman in the university's art department to be promoted to the rank of professor. She retired in 2003, but her career as an artist has continued.

"It is only recently that I have become conscious of who I am as an artist," she said. "Basically, my work is a record of where my travels and day-to-day explorations have taken me as person, and how I have recorded all of those things. Things I have allowed to be of significance are lodged somewhere in the work."

"For example, a landscape determines less than my response to it does," she said. "Every device I can bring to the landscape, from unexpected size to crude handling of paint and, perversely, unrealistic palette is dedicated to emphasizing the main content."

The Beach Museum of Art is on the southeast corner of the Kansas State University campus at the corner of Anderson Avenue and 14th Street. Admission is free. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday; and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Free parking is available adjacent to the building. For more information, call 785-532-7718 or visit http://beach.k-state.edu.