Education:
Edna Floretta has studied at the Columbus College of Art and Design, the San Francisco Art Institute, and received her BA from the University of Toledo

Biography:
She was born in the grey shades of the midwest in 1972. Being a mind of intense color was very disturbing to the rural folks around her and she got much in the way of art direction from tot to teen. " They told me to draw a lighthouse, so I did. They told me to sketch a portrait, so I did. They told me to paint a sunset, so I did. " What she successfully failed to do in the end was to succumb to the classical box that can imprison so many.

Traveling from Ohio to San Francisco to finish her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, Edna began a journey that would ultimately lead to the conclusion that there is no art, only artists, and to be one is not a thing which can be taught, nor escaped from. Driven by the unconscious flow of concepts and creation through the exploration of the self, Edna divorced the chronological and embraced an avenue contradictory to the mindwashing aesthetics of socially acceptable art forms.

Her work is replete with themes of female roles and eroticism, societal conundrums and pop culture exploitation that rigorously attack the viewer's expectations of video as shaped by conventional cinema. The format is raw in this age of techno junkies, as listening to a record player scratching out rough recordings of Robert Johnson, simply because sometimes the most perfect moods of life cannot wait for film to be loaded or a boom mic to be set up . Creation is not plagued here by preparation. It is capturing moments that are not and could never be scripted, a reality that is strange and funny, prodding and poignant.

She has been called, " .... the ghost of Karen Finley..." by internationally recognized conceptual dog and guerilla artist Tony Labat. She is in her own words, " .. just looking for life." On the icy stage that fears the sentimental, Edna Floretta lights a stick of wax and it becomes a conflagration that even the coldest breath is disintegrated by.

Artist Statement:
i have a hard time calling myself an artist, a creator, when i live in a world full of war and destruction, a truth seeker in a media driven sea of lies, a celebrator of life in a world still full of hate, a humanitarian when the inhumane are rewarded.

I have a hard time calling myself an artist, so just call me edna. edna floretta. it was my great grandmother's name. she always wanted to be a writer, yet she did not. so I have taken on her name as an oath to follow my heart and create without worrying who the audience might be.

my work is from the heart, my insides turned out, my drop of rain unto the dry earth in hope that someday something might grow.

please enjoy and spread the love, butter the bread, bake the cake, or borrow a donkey.

peace and sincerity,
edna floretta

Web Site: ednafloretta.com