Exhibition on view: June 13 - August 2, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, June 13, 6:30 - 9pm

remarks will begin at approximately 7pm

Highpoint is pleased to announce the 2024-25 Jerome Early Career Printmakers Residency Exhibition. The exhibition features work created by this years’ residents—Nancy Ariza, Conor McGrann, and Emma Ulen-Klees—over the last nine months. The three artists have been hard at work since September, pushing boundaries and exploring innovative approaches to printmaking. The culminating exhibition will showcase their creative growth and offer a glimpse into the vibrant future of contemporary printmaking.

It was a very fruitful year for Emma Ulen-Klees, Conor McGrann, and Nancy Ariza. A shared trait of these three artists is the abundance of their practice. Each of them is generative, prolific, and possessed of a work ethic which motivates them toward exhaustive exploration of their ideas and themes. Another shared trait would be their technical prowess, the exhibited work demonstrates remarkable skill

Visually though the similarities are few, it’s unlikely that any gallery visitors mistook the authorship of any of the works. The monochromatic treatment of Emma Ulen-Klees de-bossments showcase the painstaking nature of her craft (stencils cut by hand) while honoring the delicate detail of the subjects she records (aged plant specimens). This series beautifully blends the artists’ hand with majesty of nature.

She says, "These past few months the studio has become crowded with the silhouettes of an incredible array of leaves, stems, tangled roots, and feathery blossoms.  Part of my series archiving rare or extinct plants through blind de-bossings, I look forward to giving each of these specimens space to breathe during the upcoming Jerome Exhibition. As shadows of absent species, this work denies easy reproduction, so I am grateful for the opportunity to share it in person with the Highpoint community.”

Conor McGrann is relatively new to the Twin Cities. His change of environment and new role as a father have been informing his work, albeit in a more analytical manner. Conor’s terrestrial studies juxtapose the organic footprint of actual watersheds with the mechanized lines of a plotter machine. The viewer is rewarded when they get in close to the work, what read from a distance as largely natural in design is uniformly rectilinear. 

Conor says: “In my time as a Jerome Resident I have been utilizing publicly available geographic datasets of Minnesota wetlands. Through the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software, I have coded, filtered, and manipulated the data, dropping unwanted information and obscuring it from its original didactic intent. I then exported the data as a vector file and once again filtered, manipulated, and cleaned the data so that I could output it through a plotting machine. This took the form of vinyl intaglio grounds to etch plates, direct cutting to create collagraph plates, and building my own custom instrument holder in order to hold pens to make drawings, and using etching needles to plot directly onto intaglio plates. I have researched and implemented all these techniques to make a body of work that speaks towards climate/parental anxiety, distrust in systems and technology, and my distaste with our culture’s comfort with the status quo.”

The geometric patterns that inspired Nancy Ariza’s prints come from piteado, a traditional Mexican embroidery technique used to decorate leather goods. Nancy, a descendant of a piteado artisan, honors and continues her family's cultural legacy through this body of work. Nancy utilized certain traditional pigments (such as cochineal) as colorants along with embroidery, another time-affirmed technique. At the same time Nancy’s work has roots in traditional techniques and materials, her execution of the images was novel and contemporary. 

Nancy offered this about her process: “Over the past few months, I have continued exploring the intersection of woodcut, screenprinting, alternative printmaking processes, and natural pigments, primarily cochineal and quebracho. New elements such as embroidery, hole punching, and chine collé have also become part of this series, deepening my personal understanding and connection to material and process. These various processes take life as investigations of geometric patterns rooted in my Mexican heritage, and engage broader themes of migration, language, gender, and craft. 

The Jerome Residency has been instrumental in helping me solidify my artistic voice, embrace risk-taking in the studio, and build confidence in my expansive printmaking toolkit. I am deeply grateful for the experience and support.”

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Emma Ulen-Klees is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose work centers the fragmentation and transformation of landscape. Her individual but interconnected projects come ogether to mourn extinction and absence, magnify the accumulation of plastics, and interrogate the distortionary nature of western cartography, while still allowing for the beauty and awe vital to emotional relationships to place. Ulen-Klees earned a Printmaking BFA from California College of the Arts (2014), and MFA from Cornell University (2020). Past awards include the Ralls Scholarship in Painting, Yozo Hamaguchi Scholarship in Printmaking, as well as the Kala Art Institute Emerging Artist Residency. She has exhibited at the Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, MT), Zolla/ Lieberman Gallery (Chicago, IL), Jack Hanley Gallery New York, NY), Safe Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Anglim Gilbert Gallery (San Francisco, CA) as well as in Oakland, Berkeley, CA, and Ithaca, NY. Internationally she has exhibited in Osaka, Japan and Hjalteyri, Iceland.

Nancy Ariza is a Mexican American printmaker, educator, and arts administrator. In her studio practice, Ariza explores intergenerational relationships, storytelling, and memory as a way to understand and honor her Mexican heritage. Often working in woodcut and screenprinting, her artwork combines traditional and experimental printmaking techniques. Ariza has exhibited across the United States in group shows at Blanc Gallery in Chicago, IL; Janet Turner Print Museum at California State University in Chico, CA; Klemm Gallery at Siena Heights University in Adrian, MI; among others. She is also the founder of Amilado Press, a collaborative print studio in Minnesota.

Conor McGrann is an artist that makes things usually on paper, living and producing work in St. Paul, MN. He is the Digital Studio Arts Technician at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where he maintains the printshop and photolab and facilitates the use of digital and analog interactions for faculty, staff, and students in the Art & Art History Department.

In his own work Conor has a particular interest in the translation errors and systemic breakdowns that occur when filtering work between digital and analog production methods. His work is focused on the relationship between political systems, geography, the built environment, sense of place, and culture. He received his MFA in May 2021 from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and his BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University in 2009.

Special thanks to the panelists for the 2024-2025 Jerome Early career Printmakers Residency Luis Fitch and Bo Young An! Luis and Bo took on the exceedingly difficult task of selecting three artists from an outstanding pool of applicants. Thanks are also due to Alex Beaumont, Jim Clark (visit forthcoming) and once again, Luis and Bo, for conducting critiques with the residents at various times during the residency year.

Finally, thank you to the Jerome Foundation for their continued support of this important program for early career artists!

On view: May 3 - 31, 2025

Join us for the annual ACCESS/PRINT exhibition reception on May 3rd, 1 - 4 pm. The show will include artwork from students in Highpoint’s teen mentorship program. ACCESS/PRINT exhibiting artists include: Jamie Davis, Alexander Doll, Sotheara Ky, Giavana Macias, Hades Nyasani, Aurora Penasco Gouin, Jamie Quinn, Orpheus Swanson, Aza Williams-Carpenter. Exhibitions are always free and open to the public – come support the artists and learn about the work they created during this unique program!

ACCESS/PRINT is a teen mentorship program that supports creative youth with over 75 hours of studio time, printmaking tutorials, technical assistance, and support as they create a body of work. 

“This semester's cohort of students is incredibly passionate and determined to push themselves in their respective artistic practices. I’m amazed by the concepts that they come up with and their openness to experiment. I admire the relationships and trust they have forged with one another, contributing to a supportive environment where they are able to push themselves and create a solid exhibition of work.”
– ACCESS/PRINT Coordinator, Gabi Estrada

ACCESS/PRINT ARTWORK HIGHLIGHTS:

Jaime Quinn's project will include a collection of soft sculptures made of printed fabrics. Their goal is to encapsulate different aspects of their life and personality into each sculpture, creating an abstract self portrait.

Givi Macias’ hopes to communicate the complex feelings around moments of change in life. They plan for an installation piece that features swarming butterflies flying over and around a central print. 

Alexander Doll plans to create a body of work about blood, blood relations with their mother, and how they interpret what that looks and feels like through a series of layered, abstract prints. 

Hades Nyasani's project will contain a multimedia installation of screen and relief prints on various found fabrics. Conceptually, they aim to encapsulate the iconography of their own life with work that feels bright, playful, and fun.

Aza Williams-Carpenter plans to explore ideas of nostalgia and childhood imagination. Through layered, translucent screenprints, they will create a collage of a dream-like environment.