A painter, journalist, and feature writer, Kären enjoys a writing career that has included staff positions with the Tribune Company, the Toronto-Sun Corporation, and other distinguished media outlets. Kären is also a painter with a deep interest in the visual arts. Her work is in private and corporate collections including SunTrust and Days Inn, among others. She has exhibited in New York and Florida.
She and her husband, art historian Arthur Blumenthal, founded Loving Art Partnerships, a firm dedicated to museum excellence and art education in 2007. With Arthur, Kären co-conducts workshops and European art tours that teach people a novel way of looking, thinking, and writing about art. They currently are co-authoring a book based on the workshop, Loving Art: The Astonishing Pleasures of Slow Looking (to be released in 2015).
Karen is also producing a television series about the Italian old master artists now in development in partnership with Federico Castelluccio, actor/painter/director and others.
Kären was senior editor for a regional Florida magazine and is a former writer for an NBC television affiliate. She developed the creative writing program for the Disney Institute at Walt Disney World that won the highest awards for guest enjoyment. Kären was ghost writer for the book, Money as Sacrament (Ten Speed Press, Berkley, CA,) and her short story, “The Fine Art of Losing a Friend” was published in Shifting Gears (Red Pepper Press).
Karen served as an editor for the catalogue, Cosimo Rosselli: Painter of the Sistine Chapel (Cornell Fine Arts Museum) that accompanied the international exhibition and has edited numerous other books and publications. Her short story, “Susie Bright, Susie Dark” appeared in the Florida Review and another, “The Laughing Girl,” was selected for Scriptorium, the Harvard University literary magazine when she attended the Harvard summer writing program.
Kären graduated Magna cum Laude in English Literature from Rollins College. While there, she won the Hamilton Holt Excellence in Writing Award and was awarded the Thomas P. Woodill, III Writing Internship. She is a member of the Alpha Sigma Lambda National Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society and has worked on the noted Winter with the Writers Series. Her feature writing has been cited by the National Federation of Press Women and The White House. Kären, a five-generation Florida native, lives in Winter Park, Florida.
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