when she found Betsy Bowen, an artist from Grand Marais, who had a booth at the festival, and whose art work reminded Beckie of her favorite illustration technique - scratchboard. She was just going to take a quick cruise through the park. In 1992 during a lunch break from the Chocolate Moose, she road her bike over to the Blueberry Art Festival. She worked as a baker at the Chocolate Moose for a couple of summers. When the class concluded, Beckie moved to Ely permanently. This class helped Beckie combine her skills in art and biology and take them to another level. The program was in its second year with only five students, all in their 30s, looking to change their career direction. They were looking for students who either had a degree in biology or art and wanted to learn about the other discipline, putting them together as natural science illustration. A great opportunity came along in 1989-90 when Beckie found out about a natural science illustration program at University of California in Santa Cruz. She’d been on an Outward Bound course in the Ely area while in high school and after that, just couldn’t stay away. She tried to make it back to Ely to work as a camp cook every summer. For about 10 years, she moved around a lot, and took up lots of odd jobs: park maintenance, lawn chair assembly, crab and salmon processing in Alaska, medical transcription and other secretarial work and volunteer work in biology. By the time Beckie got out of college she was frustrated with academics and wanted to see what the rest of the world did. All she knew about were medical illustration programs. She took a biological illustration class from her botany professor, but didn’t really know where to go from there with it. She chose biology as a major, with a few art classes mixed in at Lake Forest College in northeast Illinois. All through school Beckie was asked if she was going to be an artist or a scientist when she grew up. She still likes to make art that accurately represents the character and habits of animals and plants. After many prints and now with a book out, Beckie has found ways to express her lifelong development as an artist as well as a biologist. It just wasn’t turning out accurately enough and she was getting so frustrated that her mother thought, “That kid will never be an artist.” Look at her now.

Her mom said that when Beckie was three she was trying to draw a beaver.

Beckie grew to discover she enjoyed drawing what she saw and with practice she could represent things rather accurately.

Beckie’s mom was always pointing things out on long walks with the kids. Growing up on a farm in west central Illinois, Beckie Prange had a wonderful time exploring the world of plants and animals.

Song of the water boatman