Description of Work

Land of Aces - 2020 - Relief printmaking - Not for Sale

Black Mesa - 2020 - Relief printmaking - Not for Sale

The Farm - 2021 - Relief printmaking - Not for Sale

Getting Groceries (I'm On Top of the World) - 2021 - Relief printmaking - Not for Sale

Somewhere Between - 2021- Relief printmaking - Not for Sale

Artist's Statement

My art is inspired primarily by my daily experiences and my memories both recent and old. I use my art as a way to take those experiences and memories that are preserved only in my mind and make them physical, keeping them alive by giving them shape and form. I use printmaking because of the way the medium puts its own perspective on my ideas. I love the element of surprise when printing, the point when you have to relinquish control to the press and the materials and trust that things will work out. The medium takes the memory in the image and gives it new life in a way that a drawing or a painting could not. The layering of ink and the step-by-step process allow the images to build up in the same way a story does, starting from a sketch, moving to a carving, and culminating in a print. In some ways, printmaking has a defined beginning, middle, and end, but the nature of printing allows it to stretch beyond those borders, the image changing slightly with each reprinting, in much the same way a story changes with each retelling and a memory changes with each recollection.

The nature of memory fascinates me, from the way we narrate our daily experiences, turning the continuous montage of experiences and sensations into a story we can tell another person, taking all that information and breaking it down into a cohesive narrative. I love the way memories work on all levels, from the way we retain some while others are lost, the way they warp and change over time, the way the connections in our brains are broken down and rebuilt each time a memory is recalled. As children, our imagination shapes the world around us, turning an ordinary field or forest into a fantastical place filled with secret worlds and hidden doors. In adulthood, we dismiss these fantasies as childish and forget to look for the magic in our lives, but our memories of these childhood fantasies still remain and shape our lives. Even though the field that in our memories was a vast plain glowing in the light of the setting sun and the blinking of hundreds of lightning bugs is in reality is a grassy lot with a couple old picnic tables and the occasional firefly, even though the magic portal in the woods that led to an alternate realm full of magic and mystery becomes a normal vine in a loop on the ground, and even though we forget how to see as children do, we remember what we saw as children and what we imagined the world could be, and those stories left over from childhood are what I want to relive and recreate through my artwork and hopefully bring back a little bit of the magic I saw as a child now that I am an adult.

If you wish to purchase any of these pieces, please contact the gallery director, Jacqueline Nathan (jnathan@bgsu.edu.)