On May 7, 2024, during a morning nap, Christine Lundsten McKahan died of pulmonary failure in Menomonie, WI. She was 75. Christine was born March 14, 1949 in San Francisco, to Elaine and Lloyd Lundsten, a physician.
They moved to Rochester, MN, and eventually to Colorado Springs, where she grew up. She spent time in the summers with her grandparents on a lake near Fergus Falls, MN, along with her younger brother, Mark and their cousins. She was enterprising and creative.
In high school, she started The Tin Can, a teen night club in an old warehouse, ran her own summer daycare, with field trips in the family’s Jeep, and edited the yearbook. One of her friends took her to a Quaker meeting, a practice she continued until she died. She attended Sarah Lawrence College for a year, then moved to Portland, Oregon to live with her boyfriend.
After they broke up, she earned a BFA at Portland State University, with a focus on weaving. She dyed her own wool, used her own spinning wheel, wove beautiful rugs and wall hangings on her loom, and crocheted hundreds of distinctive hats. A lifelong artist, she especially loved Georgia O’Keefe and Navajo rugs and jewelry.
In her early twenties, Christine was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, a burden she carried for the rest of her life. In her late twenties, she moved back to the midwest and worked as a teacher. Happily, she met Jim McKahan, a painter.
They married in 1996 and lived in Ellsworth, WI, in an old country schoolhouse the.