Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Jane Burk.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I’m a printmaker, which means I wear two hats. One hat is that of the technician executing traditional and modern forms of printmaking techniques (relief printing, screen printing, etching, lithography, etc.). My other hat is the artist’s dealing with color, composition and content. From 2012 – 2016 I owned and operated a printshop in Athens that offered printmaking classes, printmaking services and printed retail goods all made in-house. Now, I am a practicing artist focusing on my work as a printmaker and also working with other artists to print limited small run editions.
Please tell us about your art.
The subject matter of my work often deals with nostalgia in the form of objects and also manipulated photographs from college and military yearbooks from the 1960’s and 70’s. I tend to work with very bright fluorescent and candy colored materials on paper. A lot of my work is humorous, and uses idioms and colloquialisms or objects but alters them ever so slightly to make the viewer question the meaning. Taking things out of context so pre-conceived notions get stripped away and the phrases or images don’t get taken for granted.
One of my favorite printmaking methods I use often is the reductive relief print. Reductive relief prints are multi-color and are made using one block of hand carved wood or linoleum as opposed to using multiple blocks to get different color layers. The reductive print is carved away during the printing process to get multiple colors until the entire block is carved away/destroyed. The prints from this method are usually very limited. The act of printmaking is like solving a puzzle…backwards. It is very process oriented which I enjoy and it takes time and patience and pre-planning.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
In this age of social media, it is easy to follow the careers of other artists, which is great and inspiring. But social media makes everything look easy, finished, and like art happens instantly. My advice is let it take however long it takes to make the work that moves you and don’t compare yourself to other artists. It is pointless. Art is like a fingerprint. You don’t want to work in the same exact way, with the same tools as someone else, because then your art wouldn’t be yours, it would be someone else’s.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
Since closing my art-based business in 2016, I feel that I have gone through a kind of career death and I’m currently in the rebirth and rediscovery phase. I am re-establishing myself through my website www.ourladyofprints.com and I am applying to residencies and working on several new bodies of work to show out in the world very soon. Working on shows in 2019.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ourladyofprints.com
- Email: ourladyofprints@gmail.com
- Instagram: @ourladyofprints
Image Credit:
Amanda Jane Burk
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