Works by Shanlee Cox, a Laura Grace Barrett Printmaking Resident Artist
Exhibiting in the Phantom Gallery through June
The ZACC welcomed Resident Artist Shanlee Cox this April. Shanlee created new works in the LGB printmaking studio, assisted with the ZACC’s free community art event Drink & Draw Printmaking and led a family-friendly public Letterpress Demonstration at the ZACC. Shanlee’s new works will be on display in the Phantom Gallery on the second floor of the ZACC beginning May 3rd.
ARTIST BIO
Shanlee Cox was born and raised in Grand Forks, ND. Early on, Midwestern ideologies defined their reality. While studying Art Education at MSU - Bozeman, Cox simultaneously discovered printmaking and the importance of storytelling in both artistic creation and human development. Now, Cox uses printmaking as a mode of communication through which they reconcile their early conservative teachings with their lived experiences, balancing subject and process to create works that speak to both. Cox recently spent a year in Philadelphia, PA completing a residency at Second State Press, a nonprofit community print studio in Kensington. There, in addition to their regular studio practice, Shanlee taught letterpress, linocut, and bookbinding workshops.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“I feel grounded in the real and enticed by what it conceals. Through the laborious and repetitive printmaking process, I chip away at the hidden meanings of everyday objects with each block I carve and each stitch I sew. I aim to reveal their personal and universal influence in my editions and through doing so, can better understand, honor, and examine why we surround ourselves with the things we do. My work is a collection of self-realization, moral reckoning, and nostalgia all seen through the lens of tangible objects and felt through collective memories. The printed multiple serves these concepts well as the strenuous procedure required to make them mimics the series of personal and moral developments, we all go through as we age and gather our own identities and principles. Thus, my works are, in the end, a product of both processes.”
