Join us for the opening reception of our June exhibitions! Watershed by Taryn McMahon in the Main Gallery. Herded, Penned, Sorted by Samantha Krukowski in the Snap Space Gallery.
Meet the Artist
Taryn McMahon grew up in New Jersey and received her BFA from the Pennsylvania State
University. She then attended the University of Iowa, where she received an MA and MFA in
Printmaking. She briefly lived in Lawrence, KS, and served as the printmaking
artist-in-residence at the Lawrence Arts Center. McMahon has received numerous awards for
her work including an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, a John S. and James L.
Knight Foundation Arts Challenge, and Puffin Foundation grant. Her work has been shown at
The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA, the International Print Center, New York, NY, Ortega y
Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY, and the McDonough Museum, Youngstown, OH, among many
other venues. She currently serves as an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Kent State
University. McMahon lives and works alongside her artist husband and two young children in
Northeast Ohio.
Artist Statement
Watershed explores the entanglements between the human and nonhuman through Northeast Ohio’s waterways. I present everyday landscapes, such as the Cuyahoga River and surrounding creeks, as compelling ecological sites that reveal the underlying fantasies and overlooked realities shaping how we interact with the natural world.
The monotypes and installations layer silhouettes of objects found on the banks of the Cuyahoga River and Breakneck Creek, both part of the Middle Cuyahoga Watershed. The highly layered monotypes are created from an index of silhouettes that are endlessly reprinted and recombined as a metaphor for an evolving and limitless ecology. Impressions (Cuyahoga River) and Impressions (Breakneck Creek) are printed canvas banners of enlarged cyanotypes made from direct exposures of the same found objects. Combining both naturally occurring and human-generated items creates printed environments that point to the current state of ecology as one in which the human and nonhuman have become conflated and intertwined in the face of unprecedented ecological change.
Meet the Artist
Samantha Krukowski is an artist, author and educator. Trained as an architect and art historian, she is interested in the nature of images, objects and animals, the records of experience, the identity of place and the consequences of intervention. Krukowski’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, she is also the editor of two books – the first about Burning Man, the second about art and design pedagogy. Originally from New York City, Krukowski received a BA in Political Science from Barnard College/Columbia University (1988), an MA in Art History from Washington University in St. Louis (1992), and an MArch (1997) and PhD in Art History (1999) from The University of Texas at Austin (1997) and a Ph.D in Art History at The University of Texas at Austin (1999). She is a faculty member in the Painting Department at the Kansas City Art Institute and serves on the Kansas City Municipal Art Commission.
Artist Statement
My creative practice is inspired by materials, objects, places and processes that may be
culturally invisible because they are common or viewed as refuse; impermanent or transitory;
require magnification to be seen; abandoned or bypassed given societal and artistic
designations of importance and value.
Since moving to Kansas City in 2020, my work has evolved to engage materials and processes
that are related to the land, the prairie, livestock and agriculture. Materials used to make the
work in this exhibition include baling wire, cattle panels, twine, rope, leather, fabric, native plants and grasses. Processes employed include knotting, tangling, weaving, leather tooling, botanical printing, cyanotype, drawing and painting. I do not work in a studio but instead prefer to activate the spaces I inhabit – garden, yard, kitchen, basement, the barn where I keep and ride horses – to support a distributed studio practice.
The title of this exhibition, Herded, Penned, Sorted, positions the artist as a wrangler. My
attempts to gather, lasso, decipher, and define creative ideas and expressions echo aspects of
horsemanship, ranching and cattle work. Sometimes cows are easy to find, other times they are a long way off; sometimes they are willing, other times they are flighty. Sometimes you and your horse are in the right position applying the right amount of pressure at the right moment,
sometimes you are both in the wrong spot applying too much or too little pressure, moving too
fast or too slow to get much of anything done.
