Matthew Arrigo
MFA candidate
Printmaking
Email: arrigo@ualberta.ca

My work typically involves the personification of inanimate objects. I exaggerate and alter preexisting machines and structures and then carefully render them. I use these machines as stand-ins for human characters or larger social structures. These characters are concrete representations based on observations of society and humanity. I use simplified visual cues alongside more complex and introverted characters. The recognition of visual cues is essential in reading my work, so I pull images from cartoons, diagrams, religion, fashion, signs, and other common cultural symbols.

Edith Krause
MFA candidate
Printmaking
Email: krause1@ualberta.ca

My background is in zoology – in the early 1980’s I did graduate studies in aquatic ecology at UBC and worked as a research assistant. In the 1990’s, I went to art school and became a printmaker. I think what drew me to printmaking were the methodical processes involved (the print studio is a bit like a laboratory) and the organic quality of it, recreating multiple images from a matrix. I also appreciated the culture of printmaking, working in communities rather than solitarily in our own private studios.

In a reductive, binary way, science is about exploring the world while art is about exploring the human condition; science is about how things work while art is about what makes us tick. I’m interested in the liminal space in between and am encouraged in this by Terry Eagleton who has said that it is often the boundaries (coastal ecosystems spring to mind) where the most creative ideas come from (After Theory, p.40). I would like to find a link between ecology and art that goes beyond simply using nature as picturesque subject matter. Given how disconnected our culture is from nature, is there a way that art can mediate between human society and nature? Is there a role for art in advocating for the intrinsic value, beyond issues of economic sustainability and aesthetics, of other forms of life? Can nature provide art with metaphors that help us reconnect and own a sense of belonging?

Matthew John Rangel
MFA candidate
Printmaking
Email: mrangel@ualberta.ca

I am from a small town called Dinuba located within the San Joaquin Valley of California, just west of the Sierra Nevada foothills. After completing high school, I began to express a growing passion for land-based research through fine art while attending College of the Sequoias in Visalia California followed by California State University at Long Beach where I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drawing, painting and printmaking in 2005. This was followed by the opportunity to continue my artistic research as a non-degree student at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis Indiana for 2005/06 which led to my interest in pursuing graduate study at the University of Alberta starting in the fall of 2006.

My research at the University of Alberta consists of doing observational studies of places that I embody with autobiographical significance through the practice of drawing, while incorporating a wide array of linear elements transcribed from maps such as grids, roads, man-made boundaries, trails, routes, water ways, etc. With an understanding that the context of line within land-based work, whether used for art or science, is essentially a form of measurement and comprehension which imposes a framework that signifies man’s control over vast areas of land, the aspect of line within my work becomes both fundamental and conceptual. Through my practice both in the field and in the studio, my examination of these frameworks takes on a speculative nature while allowing the concept of time and personal experience to become additional variables to communicate through compositional explorations.

Patrick Reed
MFA candidate
Printmaking
Email: preed@ualberta.ca

The process of research I employ in my practice comes from a background in the related areas of journalism and art history. The investigative qualities of the former, and research heavy practice of the latter, have trained me in understanding the importance of conceptually and intellectually sound foundations in creative production. It is with this analytical mindset that I approach issues of fragility, guilt and punishment. These concerns, specifically related to their resulting somatic, mental, and spiritual ramifications are manifested through objects/imagery of tactile delicacy, noticeable degradation, and an unavailing sense of penitence.

Ryan Wolters
MFA candidate
Printmaking
Email: wolters@ualberta.ca

I am in the process of developing a series of collage-based works that incorporate encaustic processes and sculptural forms. I have worked with collage as a major element for much of my undergraduate period and my current studio work focuses on extending the essentially print-based medium into new forms. My theoretical interests lie in researching the relationship between culture and the technological memes that are propagated through popular media. I intend to explore this relationship through pre-existing popular images and images of technology in relation/opposition to the human body. This work involves large-scale collage that encompasses Digital Printmaking, Collage, Painting and Encaustic methods. I am interested in emphasizing the materiality of the mediums by combining digital methods and analog sources with variation of scale.