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Gesine Janzen

BIOGRAPHY

Gesine Janzen’s artwork has been shown in numerous exhibitions across America, including a recent solo show at the Missoula Art Museum in Montana and group shows in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles. Additionally, her artwork has been published in many professional publications such as “Art in Print”, and she has been a visiting artist and workshop instructor in Berlin, Germany, and Poznan, Poland. Janzen’s artwork is included in numerous corporate and public collections, such as the Hallmark Collection in Kansas City and the Artist/Printmaker Research Collection at the Museum of Texas Tech University. She studied art at Bethel College and at the University of Kansas. In 1998 she received an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa. She was a lecturer in printmaking at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and the Kansas City Art Institute, and worked as Assistant Printer at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop in Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri for three years. Since 2002, she has been Associate Professor of Art and Head of Printmaking at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.

ARTIST STATEMENT

This work is part of an ongoing project on the topic of water in the western United States. Lakes, rivers, reservoirs, streams and dams, low water and high water are the focus of these pieces, selected from my travels across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona.

In Western Waters Books 1 and 2, 40 x 72” ink wash drawings in black and blue, are bound into book format and installed in the gallery on custom-made wooden easels. This Quiet Creek is a hand-bound accordion book of ten 20 x 36” black and white woodcuts, which when opened, extends across the room to form a meandering river-like form.

These works are intended to provoke thought on the topics of beauty, nature, conservation, water management and mismanagement. The book format alludes to ideas of study, collection, and categorization of information. Water’s power and its unstoppable force is presented alongside evidence of manipulation, fragility and scarcity.

ARTIST'S WQRK

Project Descriptions

Western Waters Book 1, Front Cover,
2017, hand-bound book of ink wash drawings on paper with wooden easel, 38 x 36”

Western Waters Book 1, Missouri River, Gates of the Mountains,
2017, hand-bound book of ink wash drawings on paper with wooden easel, 38 x 72” when open

Western Waters Book 1, Shadow Mountain Dam,
2017, hand-bound book of ink wash drawings on paper with wooden easel, 38 x 72” when open

This Quiet Creek, Front Cover,
2017/2018, hand-bound accordion book of ten wood block prints, 20 x 18”

This Quiet Creek, book open and extended,
2017/2018, hand-bound accordion book of ten wood block prints, 20 x 18 x variable”

This Quiet Creek, Tonahutu Creek,
2017/2018, hand-bound accordion book of ten wood block prints, 20 x 36”

This Quiet Creek, Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River,
2017/2018, hand-bound accordion book of ten wood block prints, 20 x 36”

Western Waters Book 2, Front Cover,
hand-bound book of ink wash drawings on paper with wooden easel, 40 x 36”

Western Waters Book 2, Hoover Dam,
hand-bound book of ink wash drawings on paper with wooden easel, 40 x 72”

Western Waters Book 2, Lake Havasu,
hand-bound book of ink wash drawings on paper with wooden easel, 40 x 72”

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