K Stevenson
K Stevenson was an Artist-in-Residence in November 2018. K Stevenson is a printmaker, sculptor and installation artist from Ogden, Utah, where she teaches at Weber State University. K’s process-oriented applications explore the fickle nature of our memories.
“It was though I had been mysteriously transported- to this inland ocean, the moving colors of tall dry prairie grass, changing moment to moment within the vastness of the vistas.”
A special thanks to the Prairieside Artist Outpost Residency, in the Flint Hills of Kansas, for an exceptional stay and creative residency during late November and early December of 2018.
I am primarily a printmaker whose work, when time permits, tends to evolve into installation and sculpture. For a printmaker, the opportunities of residencies (and ‘spontaneous’ creative activity) can frequently be challenged with the requisite need for presses and related equipment. Nudged by this dilemma, and my annual migration to an old family cabin in Minnesota each summer, I began investigating ‘mokuhanga,’ a traditional Japanese print process. It employs sustainable ‘inks’ (watercolor and rice paste) and is printed without a press. (yes, Hokusai and Hiroshige, for example) With this in mind, I began searching for possible residencies in which to explore this new medium, and (what I envisioned) a new way of thinking and approaching the printed art form.
“The landscape overwhelmed, and became a persona more than a place. It was no longer about ‘representing time and place, but making time and place’ to paraphrase Hemmingway.”
Fast-forward…
I was very much looking forward to a week “intensive” in Kansas, from where Dorothy and Toto had originally hailed, in the flatlands of eastern Kansas. Not unexpectedly (rhetorically to self: ‘you’d think that I’d know by now?’) the preparation for the residency unfolded in unanticipated ways. There was an injury, delaying mobility, an alternate transportation mode, different departure times and early winter weather. The most unusual aspect of the unfolding travel adventure was an extraordinary weather phenomenon, one I had never experienced before-- a thick, unrelenting fog that persisted for over a twelve hour car drive, from the east front of Colorado range to the tiny hamlet of Matfield Green, on the east side of Kansas. I arrived lost, in the dark, sore, literally exhausted, and mentally drained. Had it not been for the welcoming cottage- both architecturally and appointments- and its warmth and light, I might have further questioned my sanity, for this undertaking in the beginning of this darkening season.
The next morning, I unloaded a station wagon of supplies and decided to ‘orientate’ myself to what I had missed in the ‘fog induced’ journey. It was though I had been mysteriously transported- to this inland ocean, the moving colors of tall dry prairie grass, changing moment to moment within the vastness of the vistas. Whatever I had been planning to work on (artistically) -ideas, concepts, and impulses, were also transported. And herein, for me, lay the magic of this residency.
The impressions from the books I had read and movies seen in my youth- of the ‘opening of the middle of the country during homesteading’ hadn’t prepared me for this imagery and its sense of presence and immediacy. Much was suddenly changed, by this inspired cottage, this unexpected landscape, and this altered state of mind.
“The welcoming land, the welcoming neighbors, and welcoming early-morning deer that came up from the nearby creek, became friends.”
More fast-forwarding…
The landscape overwhelmed, and became a persona more than a place. It was no longer about ‘representing time and place, but making time and place’ to paraphrase Hemmingway. Over the week, as I grew technically with the knowledge and tricks of the ‘mokuhanga’ process, the image making unfolded more experimentally and ethereally. The welcoming land, the welcoming neighbors, and welcoming early-morning deer that came up from the nearby creek, became friends. And the open, bright sunroom/dining room became the most gentle of crucibles.
The patchwork of the land, the softness of the season, the endlessness of the horizons, the solidness of place and people began to find its way into the work, or at least into my impulses and pictures. It was later, back in my studio, in the intermountain west, that these slips and scraps, pieces and bits of experiments began their final melding. I share a few of the early results that initially formed following that wonderful week for me, in Kansas.
Current update
Indeed, these smaller ‘collaged’ printed-works-on-paper have begun morphing into installation works. I’m currently working on series of three ‘personal sized gazebo like-structures’, hung and layered with prints, and printed, altered and hand-made paper. These “step-in spaces” reference the traveling tent shows that appeared in the late1800s and travelled across the country, like their ‘fellow homesteaders’ of their prior generation. (These ‘tent-shows’ were actually the early progenitors of the ‘movie house.’)
From the seeds planted at the Prairieside Outpost, the plantings are still being nurtured. My humble thanks to the Prairieside Cottage and Outpost for an exquisite and still emerging experience at the residency.
K