As an individual who excels at making personal connections with every client, Artemis Ettsen plays a vital role on our education team. She has the ability to facilitate long-lasting relationships between community members, clients, stakeholders and Wold staff. To do so, Artemis guides projects based upon community values to ensure everyone is on the same page. She makes sure that clients feel included, listened to and that their vision is brought to life.
Working on the education team, Artemis is fascinated with learning how a client’s needs can impact the way space is used in the design. Especially in a COVID-world, there is a massive time of change and reflection to determine how learning occurs. Each district has a unique interpretation of how this works for them. As a result, Artemis loves the concept of deciphering how 21st-century learning can be incorporated into the design of every one of her education clients.
When asked what she likes most about working at Wold, Artemis speaks of how she likes being able to work with people individually and in small groups. She says the more satisfying part of her job is the process that happens with collaboration, where you work as a team to come up with a solution to address a problem. Artemis is currently working on the new Riverview PK-8 for Thompson School District. “It has been an amazing process as a project manager being able to work with the clients and come to a solution that ticks the boxes for so many users.” She finds it particularly rewarding that part of her job is seeing students and staff get excited and so involved with the design that they take ownership of the creative concept.
Not only is Artemis an architect, but she is also an artist. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a BS in Art. This degree, and her passion to instill creativity in everything she does, has enabled her to become a part of an artist collective while living in the Twin Cities. This collective put on several gallery shows and was part owner of a gallery. During this time, Artemis was specifically interested in socially engaged art - a creative practice that aims to improve conditions in a particular community, often through engaging that community. To this day, art plays an important role in her life and continuously informs how she thinks about the world.
In her current home of Colorado, Artemis spends lots of time with her husband and young daughter. Artemis has an immense appreciation for the world around her and shares that with her family. Each weekend they go out into the mountains to tackle a new hike together. They have never hiked the same place twice as they always look for a new spot to explore. A longer hike they went on recently was at Signal Mountain. For a bigger adventure in the future, she hopes to take her family to Istanbul where she studied abroad. The culture, food and architecture are all parts of why she loves the city.
