A Changing World woodcut by Karen Kunc, 2021, 11 x 15 inches. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

ROBERT ROWE

Woodcut artist, printmaker and book artist, Karen Kunc, channels her experience of growing up in the Midwest, specifically Nebraska, into her polychrome woodcut prints.

“My prints suggest extremes of weather and natural forces at work, a sense of the micro/macrocosm set against landscape, both wild and cultivated.”

But these are not traditional landscape images. She eschews the obvious horizontality and sentimentality in favor of a rich vocabulary of abstract and whimsical shapes reminiscent of works by European modernists like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.

“I have always loved both artists since college” she says, “Klee, so playful, colorful patterns, unusual shapes … Kandinsky for the abstraction, the woodcuts; also Miro, the German Expressionists, and Edvard Munch.

“I am not a musical talent,” she confessed, “but the harmony and dissonance of music is very much in my mind in working with rhythm, value contrasts and color relationships. I use the term ‘orchestration’ in thinking of how to organize and use all these elements.”

Peoria woodcut artist Cathie Crawford has known Kunc since both were graduate printmaking students at Ohio State University.

“Karen is a master of relief printmaking. Her complex multi-block reduction woodcut prints are a superb use of color and texture,” Crawford said.

A Changing World woodcut by Karen Kunc, 2012, 14 x 10 inches. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

Kunc’s prodigious output includes a large body of artists’ books, in which her prints, though on smaller scale, still convey the expanse and power of natural forces. Titles such as Incantation, Temple Garden, Wild Remnant and Glacial Moment imbue the connections to the natural world with mythic and spiritual associations.

Kunc blends Eastern and Western traditions in printmaking. Reminiscent of traditional Japanese woodblock prints, her prints contrast sharp distinct elements with areas that are soft and atmospheric. Kunc trained extensively in Japan in Mokuhanga, a style of Japanese woodblock printing that is most famously associated with prints such as Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa.

Finding the process both wonderful and difficult, Kunc has found her own ways to emulate the effects, “I have a whole repertoire of various special inking methods with very thinly applied and transparent oil-base lithography inks, all applied with a roller, and sometimes through a paper stencil to selectively ink areas.”

She asserts, “as for me it is not the technique that is the attraction but the aesthetic and meanings of the effects, plus the historically significant impact of Japanese prints in art history and to woodcut history.”

Kunc’s work is featured in a current exhibition that explores this history titled Then and Now: The Block Print Renaissance on display at the Wichita Art Museum in Wichita, Kan., through August 7. You can also see much more of her work at karen-kunc.com and at constellation-studios.net.

From her home in Lincoln Neb., Kunc has traveled the world leading workshops and delivering lectures and becoming recognized as one of the most sought-after ambassadors of printmaking. After teaching at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln for 37 years, she retired in 2020 and is taking on a mission to enrich her own community by getting other people involved in printing. Nine years ago she opened Constellation Studios, an artist-owned business located in Lincoln’s vibrant and diverse downtown. It is both her studio and a community art center specializing in printmaking, book arts and paper arts.

“I have a lot of printmaking equipment and I want to share it with other artists. It is a collaborative print studio where artists come in and work along with me or on their own independent projects. I can operate here with workshops and artists join from the community.” In fact, Karen will be teaching a workshop on Mokuhanga Japanese water-base woodcut printing at Constellation Studios, August 5-7.

“In a professional studio, we mentor and educate, and we explore and celebrate interconnections between traditional and innovative print, paper and bookmaking” — Constellation Studios, 2055 O Street, Lincoln, Neb. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)

Kunc is no stranger to Peoria. She has juried the Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition and exhibited and demonstrated her unique prints and artist books here. Peoria is fortunate in also having facilities where people can learn about and practice printmaking. The Peoria Art Guild hosts workshops and classes in relief printing, letterpress, and book arts. The Peoria Print Coop, whose membership is open to the public, meets at the Art Guild and at Bradley University and offers studio access and instruction as well as opportunities for individual and collaborative art projects. (For information, go to www.peoriaartguild.org/peoria-print-coop or contact the Peoria Art Guild.)