ARTIST STATEMENT
My ongoing series Notes from the Sea reflects the clash/coexistence between the industrial and the natural worlds. Debris, machine parts, and fragments of marine life are entangled and morph into one another. As a medium, handmade paper reflects both the undersea world and the way paper itself is made: it is a watery material in which wet pulp is stirred, formed, drained and pressed. I push pigmented pulp through a grid to create a textured surface like fish scales or plant forms; the passages of pulp painting direct the placement of the prints. I then print linoleum and wood blocks onto handmade paper, combining the texture and color of the paper with the crispness and layering of the relief prints. The rounded format refers to phytoplankton (free floating infinitesimal plant life), the basis of the marine food chain. They are also like portholes, windows into this undersea world where broken bits of machinery and fragments of plant and sea life float by. I also use the circle as a symbol of interdependence and continuity. Fueled by my concerns about environmentally destructive practices, I use the materiality of paper and print to present images of beauty while offering reflections on destruction.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Raised in upstate New York, Marilyn Propp is an artist/educator whose exhibits include the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, Atlanta; Bellevue Arts Museum, WA; Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, Long Island City, NY; Galeria AP, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Mexico; and DePaul Art Museum, Chicago. Her work traveled the country in Pulped Under Pressure: The Art of Handmade Paper from 2016 to 2024.
She attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture; Brooklyn Museum Art School; Provincetown Workshop; and San Francisco Art Institute’s pre-MFA program. BA, University of Pennsylvania and MA, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Residencies/Visiting Artist positions include Jentel, Wyoming; Cill Rialaig, Ireland; Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico, and the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
Propp has been supported through the Racine Art Museum Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council Finalist Award and an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant. Her work is in the collections of the DePaul Art Museum; Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art; Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College; Summer Palace, Saudi Arabia; Amnesty International NYC; Old St. Patrick’s Church, Chicago; Hallmark Collection, Kansas City; and private collections throughout the U.S. She has taught at Carthage College Kenosha; Columbia College Chicago; School of the Art Institute, Chicago; Loyola University; Evanston Art Center, and has been a panelist/lecturer and has presented workshops throughout the Midwest. In 1990 she co- founded Anchor Graphics, Chicago, a non-profit community-based printshop, which ran until 2015. After relocating from Chicago to Wisconsin in 2016, she reestablished it in Milwaukee as Anchor Press, Paper & Print.
© Marilyn Propp