ARTIST STATEMENT
It was a longing to see the country from which our great grandparents fled that became the unexpected catalyst to my creative transformation. For many years my art process combined drawings and photographs using blender markers to transfer images onto paper. Returning home, I began the familiar process of printing out photographs taken on the trip. It was fortuitous that the first sheet of photo paper was accidentally placed in my printer upside down resulting in a surprising image that looked more like a watercolor painting. I had found beauty in the landscapes and the people of Slovakia but my efforts to artistically record my experience far exceeded my expectations. I am grateful to our Slovak family members who opened their hearts and homes to us, generously sharing their culture and their memories. I offer these images and prose inspired by the people and places we visited. United in a land both strange and strangely familiar, we seek to transcend barriers with a language of the heart. Contemplating our heritage and inheritance, we ask a universal question. What will be our legacy?
Fear not. Fear not.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kirk Chernansky is a graduate of the University of Kansas School of Design. Following graduation, she worked for 20 years in advertising art direction that took her to New York where she honed conceptual skills at the School of Visual Arts. In 1995 she made the leap to Social Work acquiring a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and in 2007 began taking courses at Northwestern University to obtain a certificate in art therapy. Her imagery reflects a combination of her two careers using the skills and tools of a commercial artist and visuals that often incorporate writing to enhance a narrative story. Themes reflect a synthesis of opposites that is inspired by her previous work as a Dialectical Behavior Therapist and personal experience of coping with change. Kirk’s artwork has been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Center of Arlington, An Art Place Inc. Gallery, Woman Made Gallery, North Lakeside Cultural Center and ARC Gallery. Her monoprints “Overcoming Obstacles” were first exhibited at Unity’s Gallery on Thome and recently became illustrations for the book she wrote entitled I-Ching Diary 2020, Growing through Change in the Age of Corona. This summer her art was on exhibit at the Bei Koc Gallery in Hannover, Germany and at the Reuter Gallery in Berlin.
© Kirk Chernansky