About Josie
Josie Osborne is a visual artist who works in a variety of media including printmaking, books, collage and assemblage. Her works take the form of poetic objects that interweave a playfulness with quiet contemplation and an acknowledgement of our rich interior lives where we process memories and emotion.
In addition to her quieter studio work Osborne also applies her skills and political/community engagement interest to participating in numerous Art Builds each year with a group of local artists who partner with community organizations using art and design to build community and to create a strong and unified visual message in support of important issues. Among them over the past few years have been multiple collaborations with Voces de la Frontera on immigration reform, National Education Association (with pre-strike Art builds in LA and Oakland California), Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives and others.
By day Josie is Director of the Department of Art and Design’s First Year Program and Senior Lecturer at UW-Milwaukee, Peck School of the Arts. She is co-PI for the ArtsECO grant-funded project which supports Art Education in Milwaukee. For 12 years she was a member of the City of Milwaukee Arts Board and its Public Art Subcommittee. For a decade Osborne was Director of Community Outreach at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She has received Mary Nohl Suitcase Fund support for a traveling exhibition and an international artist residency. She also curates exhibitions and serves on numerous art related non-profit advisory boards.
She received a Master of Fine Arts in Graphics (printmaking) from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1998 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1989 where she also studied Art History and French.
Select exhibitions include: Wonder...(a solo exhibition) at Walkers Point Center for the Arts(2016), Biennial PSOA Sum Total Faculty exhibitions (2008-present) and Continuum exhibitions, Poem Image/Poem Object at Woodland Pattern Bookand Poetry Center(2015), In the Balance at Walkers Point Center for the Arts, Thread (invitational at UNC-Charlotte); 5IVE (traveling exhibition: Walkers Point Center for the Arts, Milwaukee and Flagler College Carrera Gallery, Florida); Art Chicago (Hotcakes Gallery); Art Basel Miami (Hotcakes Gallery); Things Avian and Architectural (solo exhibition at Sharon Lynn Wilson Center for the Arts); Proscenium (solo exhibition) at Wisconsin Academy of Science, Letters and the Arts), Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors Biennial, A Decade of Wisconsin Art (invitational, James Wattrous Gallery, Madison Overture Center), Diabolique at WPCA (curated by Fred Stonehouse); and MIAD Faculty Exhibitions (1998-2007). Osborne’s work has also been reproduced in literary journals and professional magazines, including The Cream City Review and the Madison Review. Her work is in numerous private collections nationwide.
Osborne loves poetry, travel, kayaking and hiking, art making and art collecting, gardening and being out in the natural world. She lives in Riverwest, an amazing Milwaukee neighborhood, with her wife and sometimes collaborator, Kim Cosier and their two dogs, Evie Mae and Roger.
If you would like to reach Josie or be added to her email list for exhibitions please contact her here: