Kati Casida at the Steel Gallery

Kati Casida was born in Viroqua, a Norwegian farming community in Wisconsin. Her great grandparents immigrated from Luster, Sognefjord, and Gyland near Flekkefjord. As a child, she lived in the log cabin her great grandfather had built on his farm when he arrived from Norway. Growing up isolated on a remote farm, Casida started making drawings in the yard with the use of a stick at the age of three. With the encouragement of her parents, she developed her talent on the farm and later when her family moved to La Crosse, WI. She received her B.S. in Art Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. Casida was an Artist-in-Residence at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Athenée Hydra, Greece, and at the Edvard Munch Studio in Ekely, Norway. She has also traveled and studied in many other countries, including Israel, Japan, England, Sweden, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Peru, Holland, and Germany. In 1964, she and her husband John Casida moved to Berkeley, California. She founded Nordic 5 Arts, an organization for artists of Nordic heritage in the San Francisco Bay Area, in 1993.