Karen Kunc, is a Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she has taught since 1983. Her recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Jan Cicero Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, and the Blandon Memorial Art Museum, Fort Dodge, Iowa; and group exhibitions at: Skydoor Art Space in Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan; the 5th American Print Biennial, University of Richmond Museums, Virginia; The Published Print, Davidson Galleries, Seattle; Triennial 100 Cities, City Culture Center, Dzierzoniowo, Poland; Underfoot: Small Works by 50 American Artists, Dan Galeria, São Paulo; Hyndai Arts Centre Gallery, Ulsan, Korea. Her work has received awards recently in Pressed and Pulled X, Georgia College and State University, the 28th Bradley National Print and Drawing Exhibition, and the Third Minnesota National Print Biennial. She was most recently a visiting artist at the Krakow Academy of Fine Art, Poland, the Memphis College of Art, and presented at IMPACT, International Printmaking Conference, Helsinki, Finland. Karen has conducted workshops at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy, and for Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado.

Artist Statement:

This work represent my ongoing creation of a visual iconography of invented forms suggestive of nature and derived from travel experiences and my own rural environment. In my prints I use ambiguous spatial illusions, the juxtaposition of the elements of shape and color, a relationship of the edges of the paper to the breaking and interruption of the image. In my work these formal ideas become symbolic abstractions, suggestive of landscape, unusual structures, or life forms.

“Braided River” offers fragmentary viewpoints suggesting aspects of water and atmosphere, its depths and surface, spacial perspective and flowing movement through the shaped contour of the woodcut print itself. This work plays with what is there and implied, suggesting the eternal forces that ebb and flow, and shape the natural world, as well as serve as a metaphor of the multiple streams in our own lives.

Karen Kunc
2002