Dorothy Sauber, 61, was artist and activist

Dorothy Sauber of Minneapolis, artist, community activist and community college professor, brought her compassion for the disadvantaged to her work.

Sauber, a talented maker of artistic hooked rugs in the 1980s and later a professor at Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids, died of complications relating to lung cancer on Aug. 17 in Brooklyn Center. She was 61.

The longtime advocate for women's rights taught women's studies, African studies, creative writing and English at Anoka-Ramsey.

And she drew from her upbringing on a farm near New Prague, Minn., for her rugs' homespun scenes of rural and family life and social activism. Her work has been exhibited in Minneapolis and in East Coast cities.

In a March 16, 1980, Minneapolis Tribune article, she said rug-hooking "is honest for me" and "you can't divorce your beliefs and your politics from your art."

In 1970-71, she founded a preschool for needy children in northeast Minneapolis. Later, she worked for agencies to provide clients with legal aid in the Twin Cities.

In the 1980s, she served as an advocate for disabled people as a part-time employee of Minnesota ARC.

"She found creativity in women's everyday work," said her former partner, Larry Olds of Minneapolis.

Her courses at Anoka-Ramsey were challenging, said Patty Wheeler Andrews of Minneapolis, an English professor at the college. "She expanded the curriculum to represent a more international and gender-fair focus," Wheeler Andrews said.

Her travels around the world served a purpose. For example, she helped a Guatemalan village with its water needs and participated in summer study programs in Africa.

Sandee Tweed of Ramsey, a former student, said Sauber urged her students to look beyond their personal lives to the world at large. "She really could get you to think," Tweed said.

Sauber went to high school at a convent boarding school in Milwaukee. In 1973, she earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and in 1988, she received a master's degree in liberal studies from Hamline University in St. Paul. In 1988, she joined the Anoka-Ramsey faculty.

She retired in 2006 because of her illness.

In addition to Olds, she is survived by two sons, Andy Sauber Olds of Portland, Ore., and Kelsey Sauber Olds of Viroqua, Wis.; her mother, Mary Sauber of New Prague; a sister, Deb Troutman of Owensboro, Ky., and four grandsons.