Sculptor and Assistant Professor of Art Danne Rhaesa credits her professional success to the excellent studio art education she received at Principia. Her career in the visual arts reflects a rich combination of teaching and diverse professional practice. After earning a second B.A. in Visual Arts Education K-12, Rhaesa began teaching high school art in 1981. She completed her Masters of Liberal Arts at Baker University in 1987, and then took a two-year hiatus from teaching to train for an elite managerial program at Hallmark Corporation. Following this she joined the grassroots start-up of an inner city fine arts magnet school. In 1989 Rhaesa was hired as the Resource Teacher, heading the Visual Arts Department at Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri- where many of her students were awarded scholarships to some of the top undergraduate art programs in the country.

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In 2007, following a decade-long establishment of a successful design/build business specializing in custom stone residential applications, Rhaesa joined the faculty of the Art and Art History Department at Principia. She completed her MFA in Sculpture in 2015 at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, and since then has exhibited her work regularly. Two of her recent sculptures (constructed of stone, steel, and rammed earth) are in SIUE’s permanent collection. In 2015 Rhaesa was awarded second place in the Cedarhurst Biennial Art Competition. Her most recent exhibition, “Natural forces”, was in 2016 at a two-person invitational hosted by the Jacoby Art Center in Alton- which consisted of nine large-scale sculptural works made of steel and paper.

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Rhaesa’s sculptural work concentrates on environmental issues. Currently, she is focused on developing a studio practice that minimizes her carbon footprint. Embracing the ideal of causing no harm, she is interested in Nature’s self-sufficiency through its transformation of nutrients into buildings products. Rhaesa’s creative practice also relies upon researching many indigenous cultures, their ways of making, and their structures of living.