McKnight Printmaking Fellowship Exhibition
Solo Exhibition 2021
Highpoint Center for Printmaking | Minneapolis, MN
Solo Exhibition 2021
Highpoint Center for Printmaking | Minneapolis, MN
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
My work focuses on critical habitat and changing landscapes, where the combination of natural processes and human alteration meet. These works are rooted in firsthand observation, where field research is initially gathered through drawing, photos, and note-taking. In representing these places, the role of printmaking acts as a metaphor for the mechanisms that reshape our environments. The alteration of the printing surface and its ability to record marks parallels to how a landscape is embedded with its own visible histories. In both my woodcuts and intaglio prints, there is always a process of elimination in the mark-making that I use as a defining point in making the final image where I cannot reverse my results. For me, this acts as a reminder for the potential of permanent loss, but also places value on the significance of that which remains.
Locations and events depicted in this exhibition vary from the steady march of receding glaciers in Alaska, the remnant patches of open prairie and winter bogs in Minnesota, the passing of storms over the constantly changing Big Island of Hawaii, and more. These images are meant to examine how we remember and represent places, and how the print can communicate a sense of fragility between memory and landscape.
The 2020 McKnight Printmaking Fellowship gave me so much support and focus in a year that demanded as much. My studio practice involved slowing down and elongating the image-making process. This was especially true of the woodcut prints, where the time and physicality of carving the blocks became a place to be enveloped by the process. There were times of serious doubt, but I think that to continue to create is to foster beauty in the hope for more of it tomorrow. Countless thanks to the support from the McKnight Foundation and Highpoint Center for Printmaking!
My work focuses on critical habitat and changing landscapes, where the combination of natural processes and human alteration meet. These works are rooted in firsthand observation, where field research is initially gathered through drawing, photos, and note-taking. In representing these places, the role of printmaking acts as a metaphor for the mechanisms that reshape our environments. The alteration of the printing surface and its ability to record marks parallels to how a landscape is embedded with its own visible histories. In both my woodcuts and intaglio prints, there is always a process of elimination in the mark-making that I use as a defining point in making the final image where I cannot reverse my results. For me, this acts as a reminder for the potential of permanent loss, but also places value on the significance of that which remains.
Locations and events depicted in this exhibition vary from the steady march of receding glaciers in Alaska, the remnant patches of open prairie and winter bogs in Minnesota, the passing of storms over the constantly changing Big Island of Hawaii, and more. These images are meant to examine how we remember and represent places, and how the print can communicate a sense of fragility between memory and landscape.
The 2020 McKnight Printmaking Fellowship gave me so much support and focus in a year that demanded as much. My studio practice involved slowing down and elongating the image-making process. This was especially true of the woodcut prints, where the time and physicality of carving the blocks became a place to be enveloped by the process. There were times of serious doubt, but I think that to continue to create is to foster beauty in the hope for more of it tomorrow. Countless thanks to the support from the McKnight Foundation and Highpoint Center for Printmaking!
