ARTIST STATEMENTS
BELLE HULNE
I’m an artist who specializes in printmaking… but as many artists are, I’m in love with many different mediums and often veer off my own path to create ceramic pieces, necklaces and earrings, and whatever else happens to fuel my passion. I’m currently creating in the great state of Minnesota where I grew up and have since returned post graduating with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This is where I learned relief, intaglio, and screen printing methods, and haven’t looked back since! What I enjoy most about printmaking is the planning and repetition that goes into creating a work of original art. There’s always a series of steps to follow, no matter what branch of printmaking you decide to use to bring your vision to life. Personally, I like relief printmaking the best which typically is referred to as woodcuts or linocuts. It’s a process that makes you think through your image in a reductive matter, as you’re carving away the negative surface and leaving the positive surface behind to manipulate further into your vision. I love the challenge of thinking through how to create a line, and the need to commit to the cut that is made since it is nearly impossible to undo without changing the course of your image. I also love that printmaking was established to produce an edition, a series of multiples all printed from the same matrix. When I used to draw and paint, I hated the idea that I’d have to part with the original work. This way I can always keep a part of the art I create with me! Printmaking editions also allow for a group of people to invest in more affordable art, as the cost of my labor and materials can be distributed amongst many patrons rather than just one!
As for what my work speaks to, I have always been fascinated with the natural environments surrounding the places we call home, and in recent years I’ve been incredibly focused on documenting my time and experiences on the expansive Northern Shores of Lake Superior. I typically carve highly rendered observations of critical environments I have the privilege of interacting with, capturing the exact moment in time I was present to experience the space. The intentionality is to uplift the external spaces we should be protecting by bringing those environments into the residential homes we occupy. With the understanding that we could not exist without the thriving ecosystems we seek to admire and destroy for the sake of convenience and comfort. Stripping the overarching themes back, I am interested in capturing meaningful moments. Shared experiences both in external and internal spaces we identify as home, and a responsibility across a community to provide care for all places and people. If we want to keep this rock afloat, we have to be good to it and each other.
About the Artist
Belle Hulne is a practicing printmaker who currently creates her art in the great state of Minnesota. She works in methods far beyond her years, intrigued by the observation of makers that came before her. Belle was taught the art of relief, intaglio, and screen printing processes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in 2020. Belle has always been fascinated with the natural environments surrounding the places we call home, and in recent years she’s had the pleasure of rekindling a relationship with the expansive Northern Shores of Lake Superior. Belle carves highly rendered observations of critical environments, capturing the exact moment in time she was present to experience the space. The intentionality being to uplift the external spaces we should be protecting and bringing those environments into the residential homes we occupy. With the understanding that we could not exist without the thriving ecosystems we seek to admire and destroy for the sake of convenience and comfort.
MONICA IHRKE
At the root of my work is a desire to connect with place. The more I know a place, the more settled I feel. I desire to understand a region, both its natural beauty and the structures we’ve built within its landscape. My work oscillates between industrial and organic landscapes. At times it holds both nature and industry within one image, but more often, these contrasting themes exist parallel to each other. Both can have beauty and be terrible and hostile; both can be orderly and yet fragile. Having explored and lived throughout the United States, I’ve seen pristine alpine lakes in the Sierra Nevada, have hiked across two hundred year old stone walls in New England, and have sat on Lake Superior’s clean shore and watched 700 foot ships enter the harbor.
In exploring a region intimately, I’ve become fascinated by human’s interactions with an area. Within city limits, industrial innovation is celebrated; bridges dynamically move, lighthouses communicate, and buildings stand tall. My work captures the ingenuity of engineers designing bridges and historic structures. In natural environments, my work celebrates the wilderness and changing seasons, wintery paths and low bright light, vibrant summer colors. At first glance, human interaction with these spaces appears minor, footpaths and insignificant detritus along a trail. But I’m reminded of our earth’s vulnerability when I hear about wildfires sweeping across forests and towns in California, and I shudder to think of the microplastics I’ve consumed from my own drinking water coming from Lake Superior. I love the landscapes in my work and am begging the viewer to love them as well.
Through the labor-intensive use of relief printing, I offer great care carving the landscapes. Through the use of bold lines, textures, and layered color, each print acknowledges my own human interaction with a landscape. My work is an impression built by the gouging out of linoleum, each layer adding a little less information, but more specific detail. In the time spent carving and hand printing a place, my heart is tied to it. In printing a place, it becomes a part of me and the earth for me to stand on.
About the Artist
Monica Ihrke was raised between the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains which smell of sage in the fall and a myriad of interstate highways connecting San Bernardino, CA, to the Greater Los Angeles area. With her immediate and extended family working in the trades, Ihrke grew up noticing and appreciating the industrial landscapes surrounding her life. She received her BA in Art from the University of California, Santa Cruz where she studied printmaking and her MS in Experiential Education from Minnesota State University, Mankato where her studies integrated reflective practice, art, and connection. In 2012, she was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Before a recent cross country move from Vermont to Minnesota, Ihrke was a teacher at LiHigh School in Poultney, VT, from 2010-2019, where she taught a number of subjects including one-on-one art classes for middle and high school students. She was recently awarded an Arrowhead Regional Art Council Artist Access Grant in 2020.
GLENNA OLSON
I am an awe-inspired observer of nature, equally fascinated by the ordinary and the extraordinary—whether a tiny cluster of wildflowers peeking through the forest floor or an entire Northwoods lakeshore. I am often heard exclaiming “Wouldn’t that make a great woodcut?” while peering out the car window at a compelling scene. Even my garden’s vegetables yield colors and forms too delicious to escape my artful imagination. Most of my work is influenced by northern Minnesota, where I make my home.
Whatever the subject, my relief prints begin in my sketchbook or on my camera, where I try to capture the essence of what my eyes and memory first recorded. I often re-work the composition multiple times before transferring the drawing onto a wood or linoleum block to begin the process of carving and inking. I love being a printmaker because each block yields multiple images, yet each one is an original piece of art.
About the Artist
Glenna Olson is a relief printmaker from Cohasset, MN, who was born and raised in rural Hutchinson. After graduating from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, Glenna enjoyed a career as a high school art educator for over 30 years. While teaching, she pursued several advanced study opportunities to enhance her curriculum. She studied drawing, watercolor, graphic design and book arts processes at the Grand Marais Art Colony, University of Minnesota, Bemidji State University, Hamline University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Perpich Center for Arts Education, and Minnesota Center for Book Arts. These courses not only benefitted her students, but also activated the artist within the art teacher. In 1996, inspired by a week-long printmaking workshop taught by artists Betsy Bowen and Becky Nosbisch, Glenna became a printmaker herself. Now retired from teaching, Glenna enjoys more time to create.
Glenna’s body of work includes both woodcuts and linocuts and employs one of three methods to incorporate color into her prints: hand water coloring, multi-block printing, and reduction block. Over the years, she has participated in numerous juried shows and other group exhibitions in the Grand Rapids and Duluth area. She was recently featured in a solo exhibit at the Hutchinson Center for the Arts entitled “Inspired by Nature.” The Reif Center in Grand Rapids hosted her exhibit, “Printrospective” in 2006. Glenna also participated in two four-person shows at the MacRostie Art Center: “UNLEASHED” (1996) and the MacRostie Staff Exhibit (1999).
Glenna received a Career Development Grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council and was included in the Tweed Museum Artist’s Lecture Series at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. She was a keynote speaker and workshop presenter at the Spring Conference of Art Educators of Minnesota and has served on the organization’s state council. A charter member of the former Northern Printmaker’s Alliance, her work is in private collections throughout Minnesota as well as the permanent collections of Rainy River Community College in International Falls and the Reif Center and Grand Itasca Hospital and Clinic in Grand Rapids. She was the first Director of Education for the MacRostie Art Center and a former Visual Art Coordinator for the Reif Center. She is sole proprietor of Studio 1201 and operates out of her home.
DEBORAH PAGE
A quote by Aristotle sums up my thoughts about my art succinctly.
“The aim of art is to represent NOT the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance.”
As one views and reflects on my imagery, my hope is that they may find their own significance and stories.
About the Artist
Deborah Page is an artist living in rural Grand Rapids. She works primarily in relief printmaking and pastel painting.