HERE BEFORE Solo Exhibition, 2022 Burnet Fine Art | Wayzata, MN The works in Here Before explore how memory and landscape become fragile depictions of one another. Using printmaking and drawing, themes of movement and permanence within the landscape are revealed in the process to different degrees. The role of the hand is vital to this work, even when its mark-making is concealed in plain sight. How does the hand mimic connection or disconnection from the land I’ve experienced? What is lost and what remains between interacting with the land and bringing that place back in the studio? View Images --> FOR GALLERY INFO VISIT: https://burnetart.com/in-the-gallery EXHIBITION CATALOG: https://burnetart.com/catalogues/here-before-woodcuts-and-drawings-by-mike-marks |
2021 McKNIGHT PRINTMAKING FELLOWSHIP EXHIBITION
Solo Exhibition, 2021 Highpoint Center for Printmaking Minneapolis, MN Pictured: "Snake River Cloud Echo," woodcut on Kozo Paper, edition of 12, 2020 The culmination of work created over the past year as a 2020 McKnight Foundation Printmaking Fellow, the images in this solo exhibition examine how we remember and represent places, and how the print can communicate a sense of fragility between memory and landscape. More images --> |
NO TRACE
Solo Exhibition, 2020 Form+Content Gallery | Minneapolis, MN Pictured: "What Remains Will Bloom" reduction woodcut on Kozo Paper, 52.5 x 39.5" NO TRACE highlights the fragile nature of interacting with the Minnesota landscape and the habitats that have quietly receded within it. Each print incorporates a subtractive mark-making element in the image and plate making process, paralleling the potential for irreversible loss in the environment. More images --> |
Nowhere To Be Found 2019
Paper lithography on 99 panels/rag mat 62 x 62" Paper lithography is a process that uses xeroxes as a printing plate. The xerox is inked like a stone litho surface using gum arabic, water, and oil-based ink to either be repelled or attracted to the image on the plate. Nowhere To Be Found is comprised of two glaciers (Exit and Athabasca) that are quickly receding. I wanted my printing process to be consistent with the disappearance of what’s being represented. As the glaciers retreat and disappear, so too does the thing that is capable of creating their documented existence. The paper-litho process destroys the plate while making the print, leaving only the printed image. More images --> |
The Mountain Moves And I Stand Still 2019,
Intaglio, chine-collé, stone-relief 48 x 64" total, individual plate size 8x10 This piece is inspired by how changes in the landscape are hidden or revealed as you move through a space. This came together as I was backpacking through the Cloud Peak Wilderness in Wyoming, and how a single landmark such as a peak can remain consistent as the terrain continually shifts. I wanted this suite of prints to reflect the feeling of becoming disoriented in a landscape, and when you can spot and find the landmark that positions yourself, will it draw you in further or will you realize your mistake and turn around. More images --> |
An Unbuilt Place 2018
Collograph, relief, intaglio (drypoint, spitbite, mezzotint) at Highpoint Center for Printmaking Created over nine months as a 2017-2018 Jerome Foundation artist-in-residence at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minnesota, these images contemplate human influence on the geological record, and whether natural and artificial changes in the environment are becoming indistinguishable from one another. The prints emphasize physical manipulation of surfaces using collograph plates, stencils, embossment, relief, and intaglio. More images --> |
"Across and Outwards", Woodcut on Nideggen paper, 2015
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Walks 2013/2014
Gouache on Paper, 9x9" each. These paintings, when viewed collectively as a series, were an attempt to explore how landscape and memory work together. Painted on handmade paper, the landscapes represented are all public-land spaces I've spent time walking, connecting to the formations and histories of the terrain. Part travel-log, they are also a survey of accessing lands during a time where conservation of public land is increasingly under attack from private interests. More images --> |