- Why make, I think that varies for everyone.

I think it's to learn about yourself, to learn about other people, to learn about taking an idea from point A to point B to point Z and like experience an evolution of an idea to experience material experimentation.

For me, it brings me a lot of joy.

I'm curious.

I, I don't always know what will happen.

I don't always know what the end point will be.

And so it's a way of sustaining my, my mind and my emotions and my, I make my art in a variety of different ways, but all of it starts with drawing and then it evolves.

Sometimes things just stay as drawing some, sometimes things go into the print studio, but all of the work starts with drawing.

And I do that at home usually.

Sometimes I'll be drawing when I'm on the phone or watching tv, but I think it's, it's really important to just draw, making his thinking and just get it out there.

And then you can study the drawings later and make more refined decisions from there.

I take a lot of photographs, photographs of my garden when I'm on a walk.

Anytime I go to a new place, I revisit my photos often.

Like every day I am revisiting my photos and looking at the photos I took that day or took that week.

I capture interesting color relationships, interesting textures, interesting compositions that sometimes make their way into the work.

I love to read.

I enjoy watching documentaries and art documentaries.

I, I write words down a lot that describe what I'm making or an idea that I want to try to articulate.

I will reference the dictionary a lot and the, and the thesaurus.

And sometimes I, there's like a certain word or an idea that I want to try to conceptualize in my work, and it helps to work out those ideas through this sort of like def like thinking about the definitions of words and this synonyms for those words.

I make prints.

I usually make Lionel cuts or intaglio prints, which are very, very different processes.

And lio, for me anyway, requires a lot of planning.

There's a lot of labor involved.

There's the preparing of the copper plate, polishing and beveling.

And so there's this labor, there's a lot of planning.

Working on copper is more expensive.

And so I deliberate a lot longer about what drawing I'm going to put on my copper plate much longer than when I'm working with linoleum, which is a little more accessible in terms of cost, but also just material.

It's, it's just a more immediate process.

I will transfer a drawing to a lino block and carve, and then I can be really playful.

I can cut apart the linoleum with the knife, cut it into shapes.

I can be much more playful with how I'm printing and how I approach color and layering.

Whereas intaglio is much, much slower.

And of course there's the expense, the cost of the copper.

And so I try to be more deliberate and intentional and very planned when I'm working on my etchings.

Sometimes through printing, you end up with things that just technically didn't work out or just visually didn't work out.

And so instead of just throwing that away, I will cut those things apart and reuse them and repurpose them to make something new.

And so there's this always this evolution of things happening.

And then sometimes I will draw on top of my parental collage on them, paint on them.

Collage is a really immediate process of cutting things apart.

In some cases, you're cutting apart, found materials like magazines or newspapers and then gluing things together.

For me, how I work with collage is my, I make my own collage material.

So I often will use Japanese papers and I'll hand paint them or hand draw them, and then I cut that apart and adhere it to another surface.

So usually the collage material, whether it's my own or magazine or newspaper, is adhered to a thicker piece of paper or board Collage enables you to move things around.

If you're unsure about a composition or visual, you can take these pieces and just move them around and decide, oh, does this look good together?

Does this need more of this?

And so it's this really great way for students to learn about composition and design principles, learn about scale and repetition and color and movement, like all of those things, but be able to change your mind.

Whereas on a drawing, you might, if it's pencil or charcoal, you can erase, but you can't always do that with all materials like colored pencil.

But with collage, it really is a process that allows you to learn about making an image.

I make art for both myself and for others, but first for myself and learning something new for myself and trying something new for myself.

And then it's shared with others and it brings me joy and satisfaction when, when other people feel those things, when looking at the work and interacting with it.

My favorite parts of art making are when it, like the first time you ever pull a print, We call that the reveal.

You put ink on a surface and then you put the paper down and you run it through the press, and then you pull the paper up and you see the print for the first time.

So that can be really exciting, but it can also be a very disappointing experience.

And so I guess there's this balance, like you have to have the trust.

Okay, this is disappointing.

It didn't turn out the way that I wanted it to, but I can rework this and I can try again.

Printmaking can be very technical.

Sometimes there are things that you can't control, like the weather when it's really humid or when it's really dry, or maybe you have an old tube of ink that you're trying to work through.

Mistakes happen and mistakes can be very, very frustrating, but you always have to have this certain kind of faith or perseverance.

Okay, I can fix this.

It might take a while, but I'm gonna fix this and figure it out.

So there is a trial and error that it is can be very frustrating.

You have to believe in yourself.

People may believe in you and they may support you, but ultimately you are the one driving the work.

Ultimately, you are the one coming up with the ideas, making the ideas visible or making them happen.

And without that kind of self-trust, it's really hard to keep going.

You have to have perseverance, even when it's hard.

Even when you make a mistake or something feels like a failure, you have to trust yourself that you will work through it.

That by working through it, you will make a new discovery.

In order to move forward as an artist and continue evolving, you have to experiment.

Whether it's experimenting with your materials or with an idea.

And in order to discover new things, experimentation is necessary.

So I think being curious helps you develop your concepts.

It helps.

You want to discover more about it.

Everything, anything and everything, you know, being curious about the world around you and what you see in your everyday gives you inspiration that you can bring into your art.

Making those processes are part of my brainstorming, but also just how I've chosen to live my life and the things that I'm interested in and the information that I seek out.

It all turns up in the work.

And so it's, it's really deeply embedded and ingrained.

I always loved making art as a child when asked, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

I either wanted to be an artist or an author, and you know what?

I kept doing those things.

I have very early memories of making drawings.

I have a memory at my grandparents' house, maybe I was four or so.

We would get these coupons in the mail.

They were like a third of a letter size sheet, and they were, they were colored paper.

And my mom and my grandparents would give these coupons to me to draw on the the back.

And yeah, I just remember very joyfully making drawings a lot as a kid, just playing as a child, playing with Legos.

I have a lot of memories playing with Legos, with my brothers, reading, getting lost in books, riding my bike around the neighborhood, going for walks around the neighborhood.

Those were all really important things that I still value today.

I mean, I don't play with Legos so much, but they're certainly an element of play in my, how I make art.

Taking art classes in middle school, it seemed like things got a little more serious and we had these watercolor projects and ceramics projects and boutique projects and just a little more guided.

I think those experiences, making drawings as a child still impact me today.

And I think it's really important to keep a sketchbook and just to draw for joy.

Just follow your intuition.

Whatever comes to mind.

Don't make for anyone other than yourself, you know, making things that maybe you'll never show anyone or you won't show your friends.

I have memories after swim practice, unrolling my drawing that I had taken home on the kitchen table and doing my homework on the kitchen table.

And my homework was to advance on the drawing.

A lot of graphite and color pencil drawings.

I think I've made one lino cut.

We hand-printed it.

I think I went to a really supportive, I went through a very supportive school system and we had art classes.

And so art classes and being in that environment with your classmates was supportive.

And of course, your teachers in middle school and high school want you to make work and, and want to see you improve and succeed.

And so there's always encouragement.

I had an, I had a teacher in high school who was very encouraging.

We had this program for curious students, creative students.

It was a program to promote creativity and creative writing.

And I, we would go and participate in writing competitions and we would be given a prompt and then a time limit.

And I often think about that experience and how writing and being a creative writer is part of my art making today.

And so it's always been part of who I am and who I want to be.

But it really was in college when I, when I entered Bowling Green State University as a graphic design major, that I started learning the skills and started being exposed to, okay, you can do this as a career.

And the support from my teachers, I give a lot of credit to my teacher in undergrad.

She created and facilitated really safe and welcoming environment in the studio.

And I really felt at home there and I felt like I could experiment and fail and experiment again and try again.

And so she was really important to me.

I am an educator at South Dakota State University, and I work with students who are just starting college to students who are getting ready to finish college.

So I help students learn basic principles of design and color and learn how to utilize those things with confidence.

And then I also teach printmaking, which is very specialized medium, where we do things like make wood cuts or lino cuts, or make images on copper plates, or learn how to type, set and learn about letterpress, which is how graphic design started in the 14 hundreds and actually before that in Asia.

And I teach students how to use these techniques and how to develop their own personal expression using those, those techniques that have been around for a long time for centuries.

I am inspired by the questions students ask.

I'm inspired by the ways they take project ideas.

My art making is reflected through my teaching.

So sometimes some of the things that I'm doing in my own studio are used to develop specific projects or ways of thinking about making art.

And then I tried out with the students and then how they interpret that subject then further inspires me to continue investigating it in my own studio.

The university supports my career as an artist by giving me the time and the space.

And certainly I have a lot to manage on campus with teaching and organizing events and service.

And summers are very, very important to me.

That is time that I can get lost in the studio, whereas during the school year, I have to be much more regimented.

Okay, this time on Monday is my studio time, or my application time, or my writing time.

So it's really about managing time.

But SDSU has supported through my position here, the development of me being an artist.

Part of my job at the university is to exhibit my work or to receive opportunities.

So I am required to make and to apply and to be active.

I am working on an ongoing series of lino cuts.

They are all printed on Japanese paper called Kitta.

And they all utilize many different blocks.

Most of the blocks are cut into little shapes, which allows me, similar to how I have worked with collage, allow me to sort of move things around, move the blocks around, make decisions, respond, play, experiment.

And I work with transparent inks or inks that have transparent medium in them.

And what that does is it, when you're layering, it allows colors to combine, but also allows layers printed before to come through.

And so it creates these really rich surfaces that you can get lost in that you can, I mean, you can observe the prints one time and see one thing and then maybe later observe something new.

And so it's a very playful way to work.

I'm not sure when it will end, but the series is ongoing.

Art is always alive.

It never went away.

Art lives on through centuries.

The art that is made today will live on some of it, you know, materials change and materials age.

And part of the role of the museum is to preserve art objects so that future generations can experience it.

The kind of work that I was making a decade ago, I was doing a lot of drawing and then collaging, cutting paper into shapes rather than just using a rectangle.

And that title references a place in Florida that I visited.

And just sort of the, the warmth that I felt during that visit, both with the people I was with, but also just the climate.

You know, your work is a document of you and a specific time.

So absolutely, you can look at your work from 15 or 20 years ago.

You know, it's, it's you as a much younger person and it truly is a sort of document or evidence of you seeing new things and seeing things after you hadn't seen them for a few years gives you inspiration, oh, maybe I could try this material, or I could try displaying my work this way, or I could try X, Y, and Z.

So it gives you ideas and inspiration to do things in your own work.

Or maybe the artist, like seeing how an artist approaches an idea and it makes you think about things in a new way, or you learn some new subject that you didn't know before.

And having the museum right here allows it.

It facilitates regular access to those kinds of experiences and to have those experiences with students too.

They have art history class in the auditorium.

They're coming in three days a week.

Seeing the exhibitions change, we're able to have special collections visits so they can see works on paper without any glass, without any frame.

And really study the intricacies and the, and the subtleties and the unique things about printmaking.

Just, you know, like three inches away from their face.

And being able to observe those wonderful details in person is inspirational and informative.

And also, you know, the, the same things that have inspired me and learning about new ideas and new techniques and new ways of hanging your work or installing it like the, they get that experience too here.

- Each - Color is its own plate.

And then when they overlap, they start to - Form more colors.

- We learn from each other, we learn from other artists.

We learn from the artists who have been here before us.

I love sign's, works on paper.

I love this.

Just very intentional decision making that's very evident in every single cut, every single mark, every single brush stroke.

Those are things that are really important in my own work.

So I relate to that.

I've really enjoyed hearing Sydney talk about her work over Zoom a few years ago.

And she and Joe started the Stewart Artist in Residence Program here on campus, which is so important for me personally, our community, and our students.

So we are able to bring in a national or international artists for one month every fall.

And this is a rural place.

We have the museum and we have all the events that the museum hosts.

But it is hard for myself and our students to have access to contemporary artists.

It's an incredible way for them to learn about art making, how ideas are developed, the process of making.

And students can come into their studio every day or a few times a week and see their project progression, see their ideas unfold, and really learn about how artists work beyond just the projects that they're given in the classroom.

And it's inspiring for us as faculty too, because we get to make new connections and meet new people and be inspired too, and make new friends.

If you're going to a museum for the first time, I encourage you to be open and to be patient.

Sometimes you'll see something and it's not gonna make sense.

Maybe you have to go look at a few other things and then come back to that piece that didn't make sense.

But how does it make you feel?

Is there a story being told?

Do you like the colors?

Do you like the texture?

Do you like the way it looks?

Do you like the way it's, it's its shape of it?

What are you curious about?

Is there anything that you could look at a little more closely?

What are the details?

But ultimately it's about learning how to see and how to observe, whether it's the world around you, whether it's observing your emotions, it's about expression of you.