My path to Highpoint began somewhat unconventionally, with my graduation from Perpich Arts High School in the spring of 2015. Rather than attend college right out of the gate, I decided to take a year off to give myself the opportunity to try something outside of the traditional educational setting, and to better inform what I would do with my eventual college experience. I spent the year working at the Walker Art Center and interning in their education department, and a coworkers mention of Highpoint’s internship program led me to working as an education intern from the fall of 2015 to the spring of 2016. I had the opportunity not only to work with an amazing and diverse array of students, but was also afforded access to Highpoint’s co-op studio.

I am a Minneapolis native and I have been drawing since I was a child. My career choice at that time was to be a commercial artist, I had no idea what they did, but I wanted to be one! Most of my childhood was spent within a mile of the current Highpoint location and joining Highpoint has been a return to that starting point. I began college pursuing a degree in architecture at the University of Minnesota. I discovered I was not meant to be an architect, and switched to Studio Arts as my major.

My practice is governed less by a given theme than by the pursuit of certain tendencies and preoccupations. There is a tendency towards, even an embracing of, inefficiency, of allowing time and human effort to make their way into the work, a desire to approach perfection by imperfect means. There is a tendency toward focusing on what Soichi Ida called “what’s happening in the between,” on interstices and byproducts of process. I am fascinated by gaps, by the dotted line, the incomplete square, not as exercises which can be overcome by the mind, but as means of resisting closure.

It’s difficult to describe my attraction to prints and printmaking. Maybe it’s the mysterious, inverted nature of the whole thing, or the focused hours of experimentation, the sidetracks, the dead ends…the sudden revelations.

Over the past year, I have been experimenting with ways to incorporate printmaking into my work as a sculptor. I am attracted to relief printing not so much as an end in itself but as a means to manipulate paper in a structural manner that guides and supports an expanded goal. Originally based upon close-ups of skin, these pieces have evolved in several directions that include expanded references to the body and other cellular structures as well as occasional allusions to landscape.

I've been a member of the Highpoint print co-op nearly my entire time in Minneapolis. I was raised in Michigan so I am accustomed to the cold and while I’m happy about all the lakes, I wish they were bigger.

Born and raised in Minneapolis, art was a large part of my upbringing, but it wasn't until attending The California College of Art that I committed my full attention to it. I called the Bay area home and my identity as an artist had been linked to that city. When I moved back to Minneapolis, I didn’t know any artists and lost that sense of community, that is until I found highpoint. 

My art is a lot like my hiccups. I’m not sure why they happen and I cannot always predict what they will sound like. They’re always at least a little bit funny, but sometimes they can be uncomfortable. Like my art, I have faith that my hiccups are trying to tell me something, “you use way too much hot-sauce” or “holding your breath won’t help you calm down”. As their host I am both tickled and plagued. My images are simple and speak to my love of illustration and story. These odd and often humorous scenes, though quaint, are echoes of anxieties, much larger than the image, but somehow just as simple.

Born and raised in Utah, my first print experiences took place while I was a BFA student in Photography at Utah State University. There I was exposed to traditional film and wet dark room processes as well as 19th century photographic methods. I fell in love with the process of coating the paper with light sensitive emulsion and watching the image appear in the developer. I believe this love of process led me to printmaking and later piqued my interest in collaborative printing.

I studied intaglio printmaking at MCAD as a side dish to my design major, and, perhaps predictably, drifted away from the practice until years later when I took a class at Highpoint to fill some dull winter evenings. The first night I walked in the door and inhaled the smell of ink I thought: I’m home!

I try and approach image making as homage to all that came before; allowing me to address issues that arise in contemporary art: technical components, craft, and process as a focus that forwards my voice as an artist.

My work explores the phenomenon of the natural geological land formations that make up our planet. I am interested in how they’re formed, what properties they hold, and the changes they are continually going through.

A California native, I’ve spent the last eight years in Minnesota where my first truly serious encounters with printmaking and the book arts came through the post-baccalaureate program at MCAD in 2005 – 2006.  For the next several years, I continued my art practice through Continuing Studies at MCAD and classes at Minnesota Center for Book Arts.  In 2011, I received a Jerome Fellowship from MCBA; the need for more concentrated studio access led me to Highpoint.