Late Wilmette resident’s life, legacy and art memorialized on new website

When Wilmette resident Karen Shiman passed away in 2022, she didn’t just leave behind beloved friends and family, she also left behind thousands of works of art.

Shiman’s art, as well as her life story and legacy, are now available on a new website, KarenShiman.com.

The website allows visitors to look through a virtual gallery of her numerous paintings and sculptures, and learn a bit about Shiman’s life. 

Despite creating thousands of paintings and sculptures, Shiman only publicly displayed one of her pieces of art, according to her son, Brian Blasingame, so the website is an opportunity for many people to see the Wilmette artist’s work for the first time.

The website officially launched at the end of November, said Blasingame, who added it was a “labor of love” that’s still in progress. Visitors to the site can also purchase prints of Shiman’s work from the site. 

“We’re still curating her artwork,” Blasingame said. “It’s just amazing that there’s still more to be done.”

Rather than organizing the artwork website around traditional subjects, like bird paintings and landscapes, Blasingame structured it around important themes in his mom’s life, including “Seek Out Adventures” and “Live A Productive Life.”

“The whole process has made me look at her in a different way than I did in my lifetime,” Blasingame said. “Artwork was always ever-present in our lives. The response of people to her work and to her life story has been overwhelming.”

Art wasn’t Shiman’s only great passion; she was also a dedicated scuba diver, a hobby that she developed with her late husband, Richard Shiman, who was the dean of students at Loyola Academy. Together, Karen and Richard completed more than 2,000 dives before they stopped counting altogether.

“That’s almost six days underwater,” Blasingame said.

Through their love of scuba diving, Karen and Richard Shiman also became passionate about coral reef restoration around the island of Bonaire, where they lived for half of the year. Bonaire, an island in the Caribbean Sea that’s also a special municipality of the Netherlands, is home to the Bonaire National Marine Park, and includes a coral reef. After 14 years of work, the married couple rebuilt a reef system by moving rocks, one by one. 

Shiman wasn’t just a dedicated artist and diver, she was passionate about whatever she put her mind to, said Blasingame, including her job at Salomon Brothers, a multinational investment bank, where she began working in the 1970s. 

“Karen was a mentor to me, guiding me as I joined the firm,” said Kevin Goggin, one of Shiman’s coworkers at Salomon Brothers trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. “She explained and taught me how to deal with the traders and brokers, and accept and deal with the ups and downs of corporate life. She was a woman ahead of her time that conquered and maintained a high position in the male-dominated world of futures trading.”

Shiman began her career at Salomon Brothers in a secretarial position, and eventually rose the ranks to a role as the bank’s executive vice president.

“She was successful on the floor because she did it with grace,” Blasingame said. 

Blasingame said that he will continue to upload more of Shiman’s artwork onto the website, and he’s also focusing on making a documentary about his mom’s life, especially about her work restoring coral reefs in Bonaire. He also hopes to add information about, and opportunities to get involved with organizations that Shiman was passionate about onto the website.

Anyone interested in viewing Shiman’s work and learning about her life can visit Karenshiman.com.