So I’ve been in Milwaukee for three months now, nearly four, and things are finally starting to settle. My first semester of classes is over, I’m finishing up my dissertation, am all unpacked, and even have a one-night show with one of my art classes opening this Friday (more on that tomorrow). It’s time to really start making again, I’ve decided, and part of that, for my current practice at least, means finding a great collaborator. Enter Jessica Meuninck-Ganger. Jessica, the head of “Printmaking and Narrative Forms” at UWM, and I will be working together on a large-scale installation, print and video project/series over the next year or so (which will also involve some Internet and socially participatory activities), and much of the work will hopefully be shown here in the Midwest, as well as with my South African gallery, Gallery AOP, in the near future.
More on Jessica via her web site and below.
Jessica’s Statement:
My artwork is a mix of personal journal, documentary, and impressionistic narrative. Its content develops out my research and involvement with individuals dealing with brain trauma, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease. I produce prints, collages, and participatory installations that reference the inherent time-based elements of story telling and memoir, but imply the deterioration (decline) of sensible narrative progressions. I often use book structures as a way of mediating a story by tapping viewers’ expectations; and I am interested in presenting challenges or discontinuous shifts from that norm. I am not an “edition†printer, but create one-of-a-kind assemblages, artist books, and printed props that function within the context of performances or relational works.
I recently discovered/invented a new process that allows me to print etchings on the surfaces of three-dimensional forms using a vacuum former, photo-printmaking films, PVC, and plaster. This presents an exciting opportunity for “pages†to further exceed their conventional two-dimensional limits and physically fall onto the floor. A good friend and colleague, Nathaniel Stern, is also introducing me to new technologies that I intend to incorporate in a new collaborative body of work. I’m excited about investigating how to further manipulate spatial and time-based elements, traditional and new.
Bio:
Jessica Meuninck-Ganger’s prints, artist’s books, and mixed media works have been exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally and her prints and books are included in several private collections as well as in portfolios owned by the Weisman Museum of Art and the Target Corporation. She’s received numerous residencies and fellowships, and has instructed various printmaking courses and workshops at the South Bend Regional Museum of Art, Charles Martin Youth Center, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
“Teaching is a privilege that offers me the unique opportunity to exercise my commitment to emerging artists and further explore and share my studio disciplines.†Jessica is the Printmaking Area Head and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She taught Fine Arts courses at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design; and both, Fine and Liberal Arts courses at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design.
She began her professional career teaching in the Elkhart Memorial High School art department where she received the Sallie Mae Outstanding Beginning Teacher award. While teaching in Indiana, she co-chaired the Scholastic Art Awards for the Indiana/Michigan region and taught summer courses through the Elkhart School Corporation’s Gifted and Talented Program. She received her MFA in Studio Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2004 and a BS degree in Visual Arts Education from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana in 1995.
