Life can turn on a dime or it can corner slowly, almost imperceptibly, over a course of years before we find ourselves standing in an unfamiliar place and facing a new direction. As individuals we are constantly negotiating and renegotiating our understanding of the world – both around us as well as within us. My work is concerned with these in-between moments, simultaneously endings and beginnings, that hover somewhere between being and becoming.
I have used linocut as a medium for much of this work because it presents an interesting tension, both formally and conceptually, between distance and understanding. The closer you stand to these works, the more abstracted and black-or-white they become; as you move away from the work, the brain is increasingly able to resolve the black-or-white binary into subtle greys.
The work titled “A Simple Poem for Virgina Woolf” presents seven sheets of handmade paper. Each individual sheet of paper contains Canadian poet Bronwen Wallace’s poem of the same title in its entirety. I cut the poem’s words apart and added them to my papermaking vat so that as each sheet of paper was formed, the poem rewrote itself both onto and into the page.
Biography
Laura Widmer earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in printmaking from the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna in 2012. In 2014 she completed a residency at The Banff Centre and returned to a longstanding interest in hand papermaking, which she is now incorporating into her print-based practice.
Laura regularly exhibits her work within Canada and internationally. Awards fro her work include First Prize at the Open Studio National Printmaking awards (Toronto 2010), the Muskat Award at the Boston Printmakers Biennial (Boston, 2011), and most recently, the Anna Eglitis Award for Printmaking at the InkMasters Print Exhibition (Cairns, Australia 2016).
Laura lives and works from her studio in Kelowna, British Columbia.
http://www.laurawidmer.ca
laura@laurawidmer.ca
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