Join visiting printmaker, Nicole Pietrantoni, in a hands-on bookmaking workshop. Several examples from her own work will be presented. Participants will be able to develop the book structures into journals or zines, for example. Supplies will be provided.
Artist Statement
To be an artist working with print media today is to have a particular orientation towards replication, distribution, and representation. As printed matter is an increasingly ubiquitous part of our visual culture, printmaking as a fine art continues to expand and encompass a broadening definition. These complexities demand that I question how I see, picture, and frame the world around me.
Specifically, my artistic research and work examines the complex relationship between human beings and nature. While nature may be positioned as a neutral space, it is, in reality, a site of competing stories and representations. From the works of painters and early photographers to movies and tourism brochures, nature functions as a place of individual exploration and reverence, a site of resource and profit, and a respite from daily routines in the search for authentic experience. Inherent in any representation of nature is a simplification of its complexity.
To this end, I am guided in my research by the following questions: what stories shape my interaction with and understanding of landscape and nature? How have cultural and historical scripts, media, and technology disciplined me? How does a lineage of art history influence a particular way of picturing and making images? And finally, what stories do I contribute in my work as an artist to this discourse?
Combining digital and traditional printmaking techniques, these investigations culminate in installations, works on paper, and site-specific art. Rather than a fixed site or a single image, I seek to engage nature as an accumulation of processes, perceptions, and narratives – a dynamic and shifting site open for interpretation.
Information from artist’s website.