Karen Kunc is one of the most prolific and influential figures in contemporary printmaking. She is an artist with a distinct lyrical voice. She is a printmaker who has expanded the range of woodcut and relief prints. She is an educator and curator who inspires her students and colleagues to further printmaking’s voice as a democratic medium.
The Mary Schiller Myers School of Art at The University of Akron is pleased to host Karen Kunc as a participant in the 2007-08 Myers Artist in Residence Program. Kunc’s residency coincides with an exhibition of her work, “Karen Kunc: Prints,” in the School’s Emily Davis Gallery.
Kunc’s relief prints and artist’s books are disarming in their ability to seduce the viewer with rich color and bold forms and then whisper to the soul with a complex, poetic language of subtle variations in color and texture. Her innovative approach to this traditionally graphic medium yields images that are at once fluid, painterly, and ethereal yet also bold, active, and captivating. Her engaging narratives speak of the dramatic hand and comforting rhythms of nature, the ephemeral and enduring qualities of life, of what has been and what will be. The works are as influenced by her native Nebraska landscape and interests in the natural forces that define our environment as they are by the process of printmaking itself.
Kunc is a Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska Lincoln where she teaches printmaking, papermaking, and book arts. In addition to her other numerous honors, she was awarded the Printmaker Emeritus Award at the 2007 Southern Graphics Council Annual Conference in Kansas City, Missouri.
During her residency, Kunc will carve and print a 21 x 29 inch multicolored, reduction relief print in an edition of 20 with the assistance of printmaking, drawing, and painting students and faculty. Members of the Myers School of Art, University of Akron, and Akron communities are invited to visit the printshop located in Folk Hall 121, during this residency to watch the print evolve and learn more about relief printing and Kunc’s specific working methods. Kunc will deliver a free public lecture on her work on Wednesday, February 6 at 6:00 p.m.
My works address issues of the landscape and our natural surroundings as direct influences from my rural environment, my daily experiences and viewpoints, and from extensive travel. My visual iconography of invented forms and artistic interpretations are means to offer contemplation on larger issues of the eternal life struggle, of endurance and vulnerability, growth and destruction.
These new prints grew in the fecund summer full of promise and growth, ending with the harvest and degradation of life. There is a sense of the micro/macrocosm, set against landscape or space, both wild and cultivated, intimate and unknowable. I am interested in the span of time it takes to wear away a canyon, build a mountain, the potential in a seed, and the recycling of our carbon materials – the life forces that continually and ultimately, shape our world.
I have come to realize that my art concepts are also about the act of creating as an analogy to nature, with a subtext about the artist as creator/destroyer and my studio actions of cutting away wood, etching metal, selection, evolution – making something from nothing. I have posed unanswerable questions – about the invisible forces of nature, creativity and degradation. My prints are a visual stand-in for these larger concepts of the mind and one's relationship to the world.
Karen Kunc was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1952. She received her BFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1975, and her MFA from Ohio State University in 1977. She is a Cather Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she has taught since 1983.
Her works have been exhibited recently in solo exhibitions at: the Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia; the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha; Piano Nobile Gallery, Krakow, Poland; Galerie d'Art Contemporain, Chamalières, France; Davidson Galleries, Seattle; Kathy Caraccio Print Studio, New York. Her prints have been shown in numerous national and international group exhibitions: International Print Triennial Krakow, Poland; International Print and Drawing Exhibition, Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; 5th Egyptian International Print Triennale, Cairo, Egypt; Artist's Books, Lönnström Art Museum, Rauma, Finland; Busan International Print Art Festival, Busan, Korea; New Prints 2007/Winter, International Print Center New York; Book as Art: Twenty Years of Artists' Books, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; 5th Minnesota National Print Biennial Exhibition, Minneapolis.
She has taught numerous workshops around the world and served as a visiting artist to over 100 institutions. Her work has been published by: Anderson Ranch Art Center; Cradle Oak Press at Bradley University; Flying Horse Press at Central Florida University; Guest Artist in Printmaking Program (GAPP) at the University of Texas; Tandem Press at University of Wisconsin-Madison; Echo Press at Indiana University.
Kunc's works are represented in many public and private collections, including: the Museum of Modern Art (NY); the Library of Congress; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the National Museum of Women in the Arts; Walker Art Center Library; the New York Public Library; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Honolulu Academy of Art; Hyndai Art Center Gallery, Ulsan, Korea; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo, Japan; University of Richmond Museums, Virginia; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; Milwaukee Art Museum.
Kunc has won over 65 awards for her work beginning with her first award as a graduate student in 1976 and recently the Prize of the Director of the State Museum, VII International Art Triennale Majdanek, Lublin, Poland. Her other recognitions include: a Fulbright Scholar Award; Mid-America Arts Alliance/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in 1996 & 1984; Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Master Award, 1992; Individual Artists Fellowship, Ohio Arts Council, 1982
She has curated and organized the exhibition Mirror of the Wood: A Century of the Woodcut Print in Finland which toured the U.S. in 2005, and concluded at the Salo Art Museum in 2006. She organized the 2004 Mid-America Print Council conference Printmaking Relevance/Resonance at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Karen Kunc received the 2007 Printmaker Emeritus Award from the Southern Graphics Council, which is the largest printmaking membership organization in the country. She was honored at the SGC 36th annual conference in Kansas City, Missouri March 21 – 25, 2007, with a presentation and a retrospective exhibition at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center.
