Cynthia Mckean grew up in Montana and Wyoming the horizon there is chiseled against a sky so blue that some say it hurts their eyes. Wide open spaces that go on forever. Mountains thrust upward to the sky .Colors are strong. Weather is fierce, be it hot or cold. Wildlife has adapted as had the vegetation sustaining it. People are so few that it is natural for them to become molded by these extraordinary surroundings. 

It is not surprising that she chose to attend a small liberal arts school in WallaWalla, Washington called Whitman College. She graduated in 1963 with a degree in biology. For the next three years Cynthia worked as a research assistant at the University of Oregon dental school. 

She left the work force to be a full time mother when the first of her two children was born. As she pondered during ensuing years, she began to understand that in order to champion the wonders of the natural environment, one must also comprehend the built environment. 

The University of Idaho was buried in ash in 1980 when Mount Saint Helen blew her top. On the same day, three hundred miles away, Cynthia McKean graduated with a degree in architecture. Before long, she was working for the Idaho Department of Energy giving seminars on alternative energy. 

As fate would have it, in 1982 Cynthia joined the manufacturing industry in Michigan. The factory into which she poured her life and had this wonderful, special place called “the weld shop”. By the mid 1990’s, she finally followed her heart to the local vocational technical center and started welding her own ideas into sculpture. In June of 1997, she began her new adventure as a sculptor. 

Today she lives in Saugatuck, Michigan. Her studio, fondly referred to as “The Barn”, is down the driveway in the woods behind the house. She continues to find it all enthralling.