NO TRACE

Form + Content Gallery presents NO TRACE, an exhibition of new works by printmaker Mike Marks. Using intaglio and relief printmaking processes, NO TRACE highlights the fragile nature of interacting with the Minnesota landscape, and the habitats that have quietly receded within it. Each work on paper incorporates a subtractive mark-making element, signaling the potential for irreversible loss in the landscape amid its beauty.

Arist Statement

My work reflects on environmental change and how nature is represented.  The prints in NO TRACE are mostly inspired from exploring native tall-grass prairie habitats and connected waterways in Minnesota. The remaining tracts of these ecosystems are effectively islands of habitat, having escaped development and agricultural expansion surrounding them.  Each image incorporates a subtractive mark-making approach that serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of critical habitat and the potential for loss.  The blocks used in the woodcut prints physically disappear as each layer is carved away over the previous until the surface of the block is all but gone; the spit-bite etchings utilize an initial drawing on copper that vanishes and inverts the representation of grasses into blank spaces; and the mezzotint prints involve burnishing and flattening areas of the copper’s surface to create the image.  These approaches embrace the physical nature of printmaking as a vehicle for the language and mechanisms that reshape environments around us.  The land is as curated a surface as any, and its ecological losses not always apparent amid the pace of the 21st century.   I hope that in making this work I can share what I have found while passing through the landscape: beauty mingled with distress, a quiet spark of nature enduring within.  

Mike Marks is a fiscal year 2019 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.  This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

January 23 - February 29, 2020

Opening reception: Saturday, January 25, 6:00-8:30 P.M.

Press Release

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