LAUREN SIMKIN BERKE
Artist Statement
The Covid-19 pandemic did not bring me oodles of newly found free time. I was teaching, what had been an in person course for graduate students in their second year of a three year MFA program. When NYC went into quarantine we were given a week off from having class in order to learn and prepare everything that was needed to begin teaching remotely the following week. We did not know how long it would be until we were back in the classroom. As it turned out, the remainder of that semester was remote, and we would remain entirely remote through the following academic year.
In the fall of 2021 I was not teaching, but I was working on projects and exercises for the upcoming spring. I was trying to find ways to incorporate basic printmaking practices into a class that focuses on book and zine forms... in ways that might work remotely. One of the exercises I created was the beginning of the work that developed into the series exhibited in Travelogue.
Before the exercise begins, a slideshow is presented, containing a random selection of 20th century snapshot photography, groups of two or more people, as they pose for the camera. Students are asked to doodle images of figures in similar poses. They are then asked to carve a rubber stamp of their favorite doodle. They then stamp their figures on a series of sheets of paper, and draw environments to surround them.
Part of the development of such an exercise requires actually doing the things that I am asking students to do, if it is not already a thing I am in the habit of doing. While I was quite familiar with block printing, I had never used that process in the classroom, and I had not previously incorporated my printmaking and drawing practices together. The initial samples I did located the figures in real places I wished I could go to. These were very enjoyable to do, given we were still living in quarantine.
The work in Travelogue is about the capacity of the human mind to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It is about one's ability to travel the world while a pandemic had us all stuck in one place. The people pictured are not known, but they are part of me, as they are part of you, as we are one and the same.
I hope visitors to the gallery enjoy taking a peek at their journey, and that they are enjoying your own as well.
Past Solo Exhibitions:
First Language, 2019
Neither The Other Or Myself, 2017
Excavations and Adaptations, 2009
A Text, A Fiction, A Fissured Envelope, 2008
Past Group Exhibitions:
Wish you were here, 2015, 2009, 2007, 2006, 2005
Generations 6, 2008
Generations 7, 2010