Highpoint Center For Printmaking | McKnight Printmaking Fellowship Exhibition featuring work by Amy Sands and Nicole Sara Simpkins | Jan 20 – Feb 25
January 20, 2023 – February 25, 2023
McKnight Printmaking Fellowship Exhibition featuring work by Amy Sands and Nicole Sara Simpkins
In-Person Viewing:
912 West Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN, 55408
Virtual Viewing:
https://www.highpointprintmaking.org/exhibits/current-upcoming
HIGHPOINT PRESENTS:
2022 McKnight Printmaking Fellowship Exhibition
Featuring new work by Minnesota artists: Nicole Sara Simpkins and Amy Sands
On View: January 20 – February 25, 2023
Opening Reception and Meet the Artists: Friday, January 20th, 2023 6:30 – 9PM
Public Conversation: Friday, February 3, 6-7pm with the McKnight fellows featuring Amy E. Elkins, Associate Professor of English at Macalester College and author of Crafting Feminism from Literary Modernism to the Multimedia Present.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Please join Highpoint in celebrating the 2022 McKnight Printmaking Fellows, Nicole Sara Simpkins and Amy Sands. This exhibition, opening January 20th, will feature prints, objects, and moving images created during their year-long fellowship experience. Come meet the artists, celebrate their work, and enjoy refreshments during the opening reception.
About the artists:
Nicole Sara Simpkins uses printmaking, writing, and drawing to explore entanglements of culture, ecosystems, and personal healing. Her fascination with relationality has fueled her continued research into the culturally-determined category of invasive plants. Using linoleum prints, screenprints, cyanotypes and drawings, she constructs assemblages of cut and stitched layers that
invoke complex entanglements of resurgent plants and tumultuous extraction. She presents cyanotypes layered with etchings and drawings as 2-dimensional works on paper, as well as an immersive installation of tapestry-forms suspended from above.
Amy Sands offered this statement about the work she developed during the residency: “This new body of work embodies investigations into nature. Using light and shadow as a metaphor for our existence, I have been examining the precarious balance of an ecosystem. My current work uses photography, videography, printmaking and installation to explore shadows of natural forms diffused through fabric. Nature is reduced to simple shapes and colors revealing only the silhouette of the
plant. Differences between species are camouflaged, leaving one to admire the beauty and simplicity of the shadows and finding commonalities between forms.”
And join us on Friday, February 3 from 6-7pm for a public conversation with the fellows featuring special guest Amy E. Elkins*. Amy E. Elkins is Associate Professor of English at Macalester College and is the author of Crafting Feminism from Literary Modernism to the Multimedia Present (Oxford University Press, 2022). As a multimedia artist and scholar, her work takes up intersectional feminist approaches to practice-based research methods in the humanities.
*Admission is free, but space is limited so please RSVP:
https://www.highpointprintmaking.org/calendar/2022/mcknightconversation
Highpoint would like to offer our sincere gratitude to Ruth Erickson (Mannion Family Senior Curator at Institute of Contemporary Art Boston) and Orin Zahra (Associate Curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, DC) for sharing their time and expertise during recent studio visits with the fellows. We would also like to once again thank artists Willie Cole and Nicola López for all their efforts as the panelists for the 2022 application cycle. Finally, Highpoint Center for Printmaking extends gratitude to McKnight Foundation for its support of this program. The McKnight Foundation, a family foundation based in Minnesota, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive.
About the McKnight Printmaking Fellowship –The McKnight Printmaking Fellowship at Highpoint was established in 2019 with generous funding from the McKnight Foundation. The program is open to mid-career Minnesota artists who work in printmaking — defined here as artists who demonstrate a sustained level of accomplishment, commitment, and artistic excellence. The
artists were selected based on the artistic merit of their work, and their dedication, interest, and continued growth in printmaking.
About Highpoint Center for Printmaking – Established in 2001, Highpoint Center for Printmaking is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the art of printmaking. Its goals are to provide educational programs, community access, and collaborative publishing opportunities to engage the public and increase the appreciation and understanding of the printmaking arts.
