International Printmakers

KAREN KUNC Metaphorical imagery voiced in a timeless textural language Karen Kunc is internationally known for her large scale, abstract woodcut prints. Her metaphorical imagery incorporates richly hued shapes with timeless textural language. Like the imagery itself, the technique of saturating the tissue-thin mulberry paper with ink and allowing it to bleed to the fiber’s feathered edges emphasizes the organic nature of the woodcuts.

Kunc’s ability to layer dense color with areas of veiled shading is expressly evident in a new edition titled Biocosmic Wave. Here, Kunc masterfully balances and blends ordered and free flowing forms, mathematical geometry with lyrical poetry. "My prints suggest extremes of weather and natural forces at work, 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 erosion forces that continually wash onto the plains, forming the earth, and, ultimately, shaping our world."

Recognized as one of the most accomplished printmakers working today, Karen Kunc lives and works in Nebraska where she is Cather Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

She received her BFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1975 and her MFA from Ohio State University in 1977. Kunc was recognized as the 2007 Printmaker Emeritus by the Southern Graphics Council Conference, and has been awarded two Mid-America Arts Alliance / National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Master Award, and an Individual Artist Fellowship, Ohio Arts Council. She has taught numerous workshops around the world and served as a visiting artist to over 100 institutions. She has curated exhibitions of American art for Finland, France and Egypt and frequently serves as a juror for national competitions.