Carol Manfredi

By Nicole Donner

The art program gives the opportunity to students to continue their education in art or to create another path for them to earn a degree. Some do it for occupational purposes while people like Carol Manfredi prefer to keep art as a hobby and way of entertainment.

A native Oregonian, Manfredi earned her English teaching degree in 1957 and taught in the classroom for 2 years before going into personal tutoring and group English lessons.

In her spare time, Manfredi dabbled in such art forms as print making and monotype. Monotype is a form of art that includes painting a glass or steel plate and using a press to transfer the colors from the plate to a piece of paper. According to Manfredi, Monotype means that you get a unique picture every time you press it onto a piece of paper. Manfredi sold her art to Antionette Hatfield Gallery for seven years before donating pieces to various charity auctions. During that time, she mostly used watercolor techniques among other forms of art to give to the gallery and auctions.

For the past eight years, Manfredi has been creating her art using the monotype method and has created several pieces for the Visual Arts Student Show. Manfredi also takes part in the Community Enlightenment group at MHCC. The community enlightenment group consists of older community members attending MHCC for purposes ranging from pursuing degrees to pursuing passions and hobbies. Though she has already earned a minor in art at Lewis and Clark College, Manfredi is just looking for a space to create her art and share the experience with others. She has attended art classes at MHCC for eight years with little desire to earn a degree for it.

In her piece, “A Serious Moment,” she used a photograph of her 13-year-old daughter Emma as her subject. Unsure of exactly how long it took it to make the piece, she estimated it took four hours in the lab to create this particular piece.

“When I see a good piece of life, I usually grab my camera and photograph it,” said Manfredi. “This girl was very contemplative and deep in thought. It expressed a strong feeling in this girl.”

Often using family members and friends as subjects for her pieces, she takes ideas of images from photographs she has taken. Manfredi said it’s hard to put a time on making a monotype because an artist needs to take the photograph, think of the concept and paint it.

Manfredi is working on a series of monotypes centering around fairytales and featuring photographs of her four grandchildren. Fairytales include Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin and she has her grandchildren act out scenes.