Meet The Artist
A legacy of kinship.
The Artist
Carole Pavlo
February 11, 1942-April 13, 2022
One week after their arrival on the Central Coast, Pavlo and Makau’s rental home in Carmel’s Mission Fields was in that area’s terrible flood, destroying all of Pavlo’s work files, supplies, and materials. Pavlo and Makau viewed what happened as fate, inspiring Pavlo to quit commercial art and pursue her passion and gifts in fine art, among other pathways to fulfillment.
Pavlo’s evolving artistic vision and the rich corpus of work it inspired have strong roots in several foundational experiences. Born to a single working mother in Western PA in 1942 and struggling with what we now understand to be deeply embedded issues of gender identification, her early years were marked by stigma and marginalization. During her years working in Columbus long before the “Me Too” Movement took hold, Pavlo routinely experienced the profoundly challenging conditions confronting so many women in the workplace at that time. Of equal consequence, she and her life partner formed their union in 1980, decades before relationships such as theirs were recognized, affirmed, or protected. These are among the experiences that afforded Pavlo deep insights into and determination to help redress the challenges and suffering associated with marginalization and social injustice. Major medical challenges throughout her adult life further enriched Pavlo’s understanding of and compassion for the experiences of vulnerable others and deepened her commitment to affirming the dignity of all.
At the same time, the generosity of spirit, creativity, imagination, strength, courage, resilience, artistic vision, native intelligence, wit, curiosity, enthusiasm, and other gifts with which Pavlo was innately endowed enabled her to reflect deeply, broaden her understanding of the human condition, and approach life with a profound capacity for wonder and awe. The unconditional love, mutual understanding, regard, and trust forged by Pavlo and her life partner’s 42-year union and affirmed by the loving community they built and shared further equipped Pavlo to create a deeply meaningful, visionary corpus of work.
Pavlo’s resume includes a wide range of experiences, from proof reading and display advertising for the Steubenville Herald Star, work in a print house, and advertising management for a chain of 30 furniture stores, to running a small business creating television storyboards, radio copy writing, point of sale materials, package design, marketing, finished artwork, and other resources serving local business’s advertising needs in Columbus, Ohio. These experiences enabled Pavlo to tap and build upon her distinctively broad base of knowledge and skills in commercial art.
In 1995, serendipitous events following her life partner Josina Makau’s acceptance of an appointment as one of CSUMB’s founding faculty led Pavlo to move in a different direction.