ARTIST STATEMENT
I view the landscape as a reservoir of mark-making, from the geological to the man-made. I’m interested in how nature is represented, the memory of place, and how history is ascribed into environment. Ultimately, my work deals with something lost and my subsequent attempts to recover it: printmaking is my attempt to recover that thing. I’m influenced by maps, land-surveys, and other forms of documenting location. Using printmaking, my goal is to emphasize the product of documentation by dismantling the printing matrix that is the foundation for the image. To dismantle the view and recombine works in ways that reflect land-use and changing environments acknowledges the role of my own hand within it. I see this as a parallel to the frailty of landscape. Above all, my prints are based on representing the pace of change to places I find a deep connection to. My printing processes are meant to parallel the physical manipulation of land, echoed in the surfaces of the prints using collagraph plates, stencils, embossment, relief and intaglio processes.
I view the landscape as a reservoir of mark-making, from the geological to the man-made. I’m interested in how nature is represented, the memory of place, and how history is ascribed into environment. Ultimately, my work deals with something lost and my subsequent attempts to recover it: printmaking is my attempt to recover that thing. I’m influenced by maps, land-surveys, and other forms of documenting location. Using printmaking, my goal is to emphasize the product of documentation by dismantling the printing matrix that is the foundation for the image. To dismantle the view and recombine works in ways that reflect land-use and changing environments acknowledges the role of my own hand within it. I see this as a parallel to the frailty of landscape. Above all, my prints are based on representing the pace of change to places I find a deep connection to. My printing processes are meant to parallel the physical manipulation of land, echoed in the surfaces of the prints using collagraph plates, stencils, embossment, relief and intaglio processes.
BIO
Mike Marks (b. 1984 | Morgantown, WV) holds a BFA in Drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Delaware. His prints and drawings have shown both nationally and internationally. He currently lives and works out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was a 2017/2018 Jerome Foundation Emerging Printmaker in Residence at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking, and is a 2019 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant awardee.
Prior to relocating to Minnesota, he was Director of Intaglio for Maine-based printmaking collective Pickwick Independent Press from 2013-2016. Mike has taught printmaking at Haystack Mountain School of Craft (ME), Long Island University (NY), and the University of Delaware (DE). He's also conducted workshops at art-centers in New Mexico, Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, and Maine. Mike has been an artist-in-residence at the Tides Institute & Museum of Art (Eastport, ME), Stone Trigger Press (Abiquiu, NM), Crooked Tree Art Center (Petoskey, MI), and Acadia National Park (Mt. Desert Island, ME).
When he's not printing he's usually out backpacking or exploring rivers! Fly rod in hand!!!!
Contact/Inquiries at: mikemarks.art@gmail.com