Online Exhibition

Karen Adrienne and Kristin Sarette

Transforming, concealing, and revealing

Kristin Sarette (left) and Karen Adrienne (right)

To purchase work in the show, click on Karen or Kristin’s artist icon on our Home or Artists pages.

Kristin Sarette was born and raised in the mountains of New Hampshire. Since then, though, she’s lived in 5 different states and earned both BFA and MFA degrees in printmaking, as well as studying collaborative lithography at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque.

She says, about her work:

Through print media, I examine continual growth and transformation. The work tells a formal story of changes and paradigm shifts during intense self-introspection and change. As a metaphor for these unclear emotional states, I use the chromatic spectrum of yellow.

 Yellow creates conflicting associations of illness and cowardice, brightness and inherent optimism; all attributes coexisting during periods of change. Beyond these complexities lay simplicity. The hue cannot be derived or produced by mixing, therefore the notion of fundamental existence resonates with the human experience and the elementary simplicity of the color suggests a relatability to the viewer.

The work stems for the Formalists’ use of graphic color and phenomenological underpinnings. Although the artist’s hand, and a conceptual notion beyond the objects themselves can be seen, I also gravitate toward certain ideas behind Minimalism. Gestalt and preexisting systems, which can be seen in the works of artists like Agnes Martin and Anne Truitt, are major influences for my process.

I find relevancy in the totality of the aesthetic and non-aesthetic. The process of transformation continues cyclically, with one cycle informing the next. The work represents this infinite progression, the moments within it, and the whole in which these moments become.

See also Kristin’s video below.

Karen Adrienne was a  Professor of Art at the University of Maine at Augusta for 30 years where she taught drawing, printmaking and artists' books. Now she’s the owner and director of Artdogs Studios and Circling the Square Fine Art Press in Gardiner, Maine.

She explains a bit about her work in this show:

This new work is inspired by spring, and the thaw of rivers and streams.  I was a residenct at The Vermont Studio Center for the month of March this year. Half way through the residency, anxiety over the Coronavirus prompted the closing of the center and all the residents were sent home. 

While I was in residence I studied the Gihon River that runs right by the residency dining hall and some of the studios at VSC.  I photographed the ice and water daily and studied the movement and colors each day in my print studio. As the ice melted, the waters burst forth freed of the winter restraint.  The vivid energy of spring thaw influenced my palette and marks.  Back home the fast flowing Cobbossee Stream and Kennebec River added to my inspiration.

About 10 years ago, I had a “printmaking crisis.”  Like any good crisis, my printmaking crisis challenged me to come up with reasons that I spent so much of my life and art devoted to printmaking. I asked myself “What do I love about printmaking and what can I do with this medium that no other medium offers”? I am not sure why this question was so important then, but it prompted me to explore the fold in my print work.  

Some of the attractive attributes of a fold are that it is crisp, clean, and determined. These qualities offer a simultaneous opportunity for the pleasure and paradox of:  interior/exterior, concealing/revealing, flat/dimensional, division/unity. The reciprocity and interchange of these properties provides mutually beneficial exchanges.  These attributes and reciprocities are of keen interest to me as a book and printmaking artist. 

This reflection and experimentation led me to try to articulate a short list of physical properties that I love about printmaking: paper, ink, metal, and pressure. Here the most important and unique physical property is pressure. Yes, the kind of pressure that I get with a press. The kind of pressure that ensures a reciprocity and the making of two prints with folds and embossments at the same time.   I also realized the paradoxical components of the fold that I love in bookmaking are intimately embedded in the physical properties of the folded print. I could fold the paper and both conceal and reveal at the same time, I could divide the paper to contribute to its unity, and I could use the flat paper to create a dimensional print.

 A new component in some of this work was the use of Tyvek instead of paper. The works “Crack Open the Night Song” and “Ice Breaker” show the influence of this new medium.

 Wherever I have the privilege of printing, I am interpreting a lived experience and trying to present the transformative power of the natural world. 

“Something special happens when Karen Adrienne takes a walk.  Nature flattens out into shimmering planes of color, mark, and movement, and these reflect an emotional conversation with a piece of sky, water, night, or moment of transformation.  Each individual print is made utilizing the unique qualities of a printing press to capture ink, folds and embossing all at the same time. Through both intention and chance, the original vision and emotional connection to nature is re-awakened for the artist and the viewer.” David Morgan, Green Lion Gallery

Kristin Sarette talks about her work in the show: