visiting artist: karen kunc

we had the pleasure of having karen kunc come and demo one of her woodblock prints for us. karen has been a printmaking professor at the university of nebraska-lincoln since the late nineties, she has an overwhelming portfolio that will leave you scratching your head, and a curriculum vitae that will send you crying in shame to your grad school art professors.
In simple terms, she kicks butt.





her work has been hung in the phillips hall gallery this month and her prints have left many puzzled with it's elaborate layers and patterns. at first glance, it seems that she must be using 10 or more boards in order to get all of the different shapes.
when she came into class, she only brought two boards, board A & B. she had already done a bit of carving on the boards- a simple cloud image- and by using carbon paper and tracing paper, she made one board the positive and the other negative. I don't want to give everything away but in short her secret for the layers, stencil newsprint.

the demo blew me away and helped me think differently about my work. while printing we would ask questions and it was uplifting to see someone work so organically.
I asked if she ever premeditated any of her pieces prior to the performing the woodcuts and she said she just did as she liked. when she felt like using a color, she used it. if she wanted to have some shapes in a certain area, she would carve a little more. she allowed the piece to come together as she was working on it. she dealt with issues as they arose and had fun with it. this was great to hear since i feel that I do the same.

ccccheck her out.
karen kunc