Exhibition on view: June 13 - August 2, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday, June 13, 6:30 - 9pm
artists will deliver brief remarks 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.
If you had to choose one word to describe this group of artists, it would be prolific. During the in-progress critiques that have taken place over the last 8 months these artists have shown an astonishing amount of new work.
It’s difficult to overstate the exactitude Emma Ulen-Klees applies to her hyper-detailed cut stencil debossing and lithographic images she is developing. 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. His practice is generative, utilizing numerous digital and analog processes, including machine-cut vinyl stencils, plotter drawings, and etched copper plates.
Conor says: “In my time as a Jerome Resident I have been utilizing publically 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.”
Nancy Ariza (very ambitiously) explored beginning an entirely new body of work during the residency year that reimagines the traditional Mexican board game Loteria. Ultimately though, she decided instead for this exhibition to focus on continuing to develop a large series of colorful geometric pattern studies. They are gorgeous!
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.