It was a time in her life when the right side of her brain needed to come into play.
Muriel Simms, a longtime educator in Madison, was working on her doctorate in 2000 — 25 years after receiving her master’s in curriculum and instruction at the UW — when she decided to stir creative juices.
“My mother had just died, too, and I was very close to her, so this was a real intense, emotional period in my life,” Simms recalls.
To relieve stress, she took some art classes and eventually created a line of greeting cards with an African-American focus.