Katie O'Rourke, a native of Colorado, has lived and worked in Denver mot of her life. She received an associate's degree in Photography from the Colorado Institute of Art in 1991 and has worked commercially as a photographer ever since. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art degree from Portland State University in 2008, studying subjects ranging from art history to filmmaking, glass and metalworking, painting and printmaking and many other types of creative expression. She owns and operates Traveling Picasso paint parties and Kotola Studios, a local cooperative art studio specializing in fine and functional art and art education. Her mask signifies how we stifle ourselves because of fear based on nothing by conjecture or the avoidance of presumed pain.