In celebration of her solo exhibition in the Sherry Grover Gallery, BIMA is delighted to welcome artist’s book creator and master printmaker Karen Kunc for a talk about her practice, followed by conversation and a light reception.

Karen Kunc explores inventive color abstractions of the natural and human-fashioned world in her prints and artist books, creating ideas of ‘strange beauty’. Kunc was born in Omaha, Nebraska. She received her BFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1975, and her MFA from Ohio State University in 1977. She is the Cather Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln where she has taught since 1983. Her awards include: Fulbright Scholar Awards to Finland and Bangladesh; two National Endowment for the Arts awards; the 2007 SGCI Printmaker Emeritus Award; a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Master Award; an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship; the 2016 Lincoln Mayor’s Art Award; the 2000 Governor’s Art Award. Recent prizes for her work include: the Miniature Print Exhibition X, Vancouver, Canada; the Yerevan Print Biennial, Armenia; the Novosibirsk Print Triennial, Russia; Hida Woodcut Triennial, Takayama, Japan. She has exhibited her color woodcut prints and artist books extensively nationally and internationally, recent invitational venues include: Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Maui, Hawaii; New York, NY; Venice, Italy; Santander, Spain; Krakow, Poland.; Austin, Texas. Her work is in public collections including: the Museum of Modern Art; the Library of Congress; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Sheldon Museum of Art; Joslyn Art Museum; American Art Museum Smithsonian; Haas Arts Library Yale University; Stanford University; Jyväskylä Art Museum, Finland; Spencer Library University of Kansas; Portland (OR) Art Museum; Herbert E. Johnson Museum of Art Cornell University. She has taught workshops in Egypt, Italy, Finland, Poland, Japan, France, Mexico, Iceland, Spain; and she has lectured as a visiting artist to over 200 institutions. In 2014 she opened Constellation Studios as a creative work-site for print, paper, and book, inviting artists for residencies, workshops, collaborations, exhibitions.

Header image: Karen Kunc (Lincoln, NE), Sky Ladders, 2017, woodcut, Japanese Nishinouchi paper 7.3″h x 25″w (open), edition #4 of 11, photo by Hunter Stroud

Thumbnail image: Karen Kunc (Lincoln, NE) Evocations, 2006, woodcut, etching, letterpress, Japanese Nishinouchi paper 9.25″h x 4.5″w (object), edition #5 of 25, photo by Hunter Stroud