Karen Kunc Artist Talk and Reception

In celebration of her solo exhibition in the Sherry Grover Gallery, BIMA is delighted to welcome artist’s book creator and master printmaker Karen Kunc for a talk about her practice, followed by conversation and a light reception. 

Karen Kunc explores inventive color abstractions of the natural and human-fashioned world in her prints and artist books, creating ideas of ‘strange beauty’. 

Kunc was born in Omaha, Nebraska. She received her BFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1975, and her MFA from Ohio State University in 1977. She is the Cather Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln where she has taught since 1983.

Her awards include: Fulbright Scholar Awards to Finland and Bangladesh; two National Endowment for the Arts awards; the 2007 SGCI Printmaker Emeritus Award; a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Master Award; an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship; the 2016 Lincoln Mayor’s Art Award; the 2000 Governor’s Art Award. Recent prizes for her work include: the Miniature Print Exhibition X, Vancouver, Canada; the Yerevan Print Biennial, Armenia; the Novosibirsk Print Triennial, Russia; Hida Woodcut Triennial, Takayama, Japan.

She has exhibited her color woodcut prints and artist books extensively nationally and internationally, recent invitational venues include: Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Maui, Hawaii; New York, NY; Venice, Italy; Santander, Spain; Krakow, Poland.; Austin, Texas. Her work is in public collections including: the Museum of Modern Art; the Library of Congress; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Sheldon Museum of Art; Joslyn Art Museum; American Art Museum Smithsonian; Haas Arts Library Yale University; Stanford University; Jyväskylä Art Museum, Finland; Spencer Library University of Kansas; Portland (OR) Art Museum; Herbert E. Johnson Museum of Art Cornell University. She has taught workshops in Egypt, Italy, Finland, Poland, Japan, France, Mexico, Iceland, Spain; and she has lectured as a visiting artist to over 200 institutions. In 2014 she opened Constellation Studios as a creative work-site for print, paper, and book, inviting artists for residencies, workshops, collaborations, exhibitions. 

Icon image c/o BIMA: Karen Kunc (Lincoln, NE), Sky Ladders, 2017, woodcut, Japanese Nishinouchi paper 7.3″h x 25″w (open), edition #4 of 11, photo by Hunter Stroud.