Left to right: Emma Ulen-Klees, Conor McGrann, Nancy Ariza
Please join us in welcoming the 2024-2025 Jerome Early Career Printmakers Emma Ulen-Klees, Conor McGrann, and Nancy Ariza!
Three artists are selected annually to participate in the Jerome Early Career Printmakers Residency at Highpoint. Thanks to the generous support of the Jerome Foundation, this program has existed since 2003 and has served more than 50 early career printmakers.
The Jerome Residency program is open to early career Minnesota printmakers who already possess training in one or more traditional printmaking techniques. Early Career is defined here as an artist with a record of creating and exhibiting original work who has not received consistent development and production opportunities and significant recognition, awards, and acclaim regardless of age or recognition in other fields.
These artists will use the co-op studio at Highpoint to pursue their printmaking practice toward their culminating exhibition, which will open in June 2025. In addition to studio access and their eventual exhibition, Emma, Conor, and Nancy will enjoy periodic studio visits with invited guests, along with learning and professional development opportunities.
Special thanks to our esteemed panelists Bo Young An and Luis Fitch for their careful review of the outstanding applicants.
About the artists:
As a new(ish) father to a two year old daughter, Conor McGrann has found that his artistic practice has changed quite significantly since she was born. As such, he says “I am so excited for this opportunity, as it will allow me to invest the time and resources I need to fully develop a new way of working as an active artist and parent. I really love intaglio printmaking in all its forms. I find it to be a perfect and at times frustrating collaboration between myself, the materials, and the process. Even after many years of work the act of making a plate always provides surprises. I hope to use this time at Highpoint Center for Printmaking to lean into the “how did that happen?” moments to make work that is fully in conversation with the process and material restrictions intaglio offers.”
Conor McGrann is an artist that makes things usually on paper, living and producing work in St. Paul, MN. He is the Digital Studio Arts Technician at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where he maintains the printshop and photolab and facilitates the use of digital and analog interactions for faculty, staff, and students in the Art & Art History Department.
In his own work Conor has a particular interest in the translation errors and systemic breakdowns that occur when filtering work between digital and analog production methods. His work is focused on the relationship between political systems, geography, the built environment, sense of place, and culture. He received his MFA in May 2021 from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and his BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University in 2009.
About her Practice, Nancy Ariza offered this: “Pattern serves as my primary visual language through which I explore my Mexican heritage, seeking to understand my lineage and deepen my connection to my ancestors and culture as a second-generation immigrant. During the residency, I will focus on exploring new ideas that are rooted in Chicana feminism while still working in abstraction. I’ll be revisiting large-scale printing and continuing to investigate experimental printing techniques using powdered pigments. I’m also looking forward to receiving feedback on my work from guest critics and fellow Jerome artists in residence.”
Nancy Ariza is a Mexican American printmaker, educator, and arts administrator. In her studio practice, Ariza explores intergenerational relationships, storytelling, and memory as a way to understand and honor her Mexican heritage. Often working in woodcut and screenprinting, her artwork combines traditional and experimental printmaking techniques. Ariza has exhibited across the United States in group shows at Blanc Gallery in Chicago, IL; Janet Turner Print Museum at California State University in Chico, CA; Klemm Gallery at Siena Heights University in Adrian, MI; among others. She is also the founder of Amilado Press, a collaborative print studio in Minnesota.
The multiscalar realities and consequences of environmental degradation, transformation, and fragmentation are central to the work of Emma Ulen-Klees. She states: “Through research, and the intensely personal process of archiving, extinct flora and cartographic text/imagery become material actors in ever evolving environmental narratives. The material reality of each subject is further reflected in my method of making and each projects’ form, allowing me to experiment with both the physical and conceptual capabilities of different mediums.”
“The Jerome Fellowship will allow me to push my practice by continuing these ongoing projects, as well as providing support and foundation to experiment and grow new ideas! While I look forward to the advancement of a long term project archiving extinct plants through paper embossings, I am also excited to translate a series of ink paintings/drawings exploring the history of cartography and its symbols, into prints for the first time. I often process ideas through series, or sequential works, so the particular ways many print matrices hold a memory through transformation will be a great push for those ideas. I am especially interested in how lithography, and monotype will bring out different elements within this work. Beyond these particular projects I happily anticipate the unpredicted and unexpected paths my work may take over the course of the fellowship, whether by happy accident, or generative community feedback. It is this mutual exchange between subject and process (which feels particularly rich in printmaking) that I most look forward to learning from.”
Emma Ulen-Klees is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose work centers the fragmentation and transformation of landscape. Her individual but interconnected projects come together to mourn extinction and absence, magnify the accumulation of plastics, and interrogate the distortionary nature of western cartography, while still allowing for the beauty and awe vital to emotional relationships to place. Ulen-Klees earned a Printmaking BFA from California College of the Arts (2014), and MFA from Cornell University (2020). Past awards include the Ralls Scholarship in Painting, Yozo Hamaguchi Scholarship in Printmaking, as well as the Kala Art Institute Emerging Artist Residency. She has exhibited at the Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, MT), Zolla/ Lieberman Gallery (Chicago, IL), Jack Hanley Gallery (New York, NY), Safe Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Anglim Gilbert Gallery (San Francisco, CA) as well as in Oakland, Berkeley, CA, and Ithaca, NY. Internationally she has exhibited in Osaka, Japan and Hjalteyri, Iceland.
About the review panelists:
Bo Young An is best described as a creative. Her practice includes, but is not limited to, curation, illustration, design, murals, and education. An received her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts from the University of Washington, Seattle, and her MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2022. Her work has been shown at exhibitions in Seoul + Hanam (KR), Honfleur (FR), Leon (SP), and Seattle + Wisconsin + Minnesota (USA).
Luis Fitch is an internationally renowned Mexican artist, mentor, and creative entrepreneur specializing in visual art and working across gallery and urban art settings. His legacy transcends barriers, cultivates cross-cultural connections, and infuses design with meaning and purpose. His relentless commitment to bridging divides through his creative endeavors inspires the world—a testament to the enduring power of art and design to foster unity and understanding.
His artwork is featured in over 380 private and institutional collections throughout the United States, Europe, Dubai, Mexico, and Latin America, including prestigious institutions such as the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, and many more.
Luis's creative journey continues to evolve, marked by recent milestones that underscore his indomitable spirit. Notably, he was commissioned to illustrate four stamps for the United States Postal Service, a testament to the profound impact of his artistry on a national scale. Additionally, Luis crafted the first-ever art collection by a Mexican artist for Target stores, commemorating the revered Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) tradition. His involvement as the Commission Chair of the State Flag and Emblem Redesign, appointed by the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, further exemplifies his dedication to shaping cultural narratives.
Bo Young An and Luis Fitch
