Tracy Ross and Nicole Hand-Bryant discuss Murray State University Printmaking's visiting artist program, which hosted Janet Ballweg this week.
This is the 18th edition of MSU’s Visiting Artist Series and the first artist hosted under the program’s new endowment from Patricia Summerville, who graduated from Murray State with a degree in art in 1972. Summerville’s career has spanned from teaching art to hospital administration to practicing law. She was inspired to create her endowment because of her experience in the MSU Art Department, to which she credits her ability to think critically and creatively.
Janet Ballweg is the first artist to visit under the new endowment. She has been a faculty member at Bowling Green State University since 1990. Her current work includes a series of prints of domestic landscapes that explore issues of gender, power versus vulnerability, presence versus absence, and others. Ballweg says the prints are constructions of her memory and experience but they are not autobiographical.
Students worked in shifts to help Janet print her next work in the series. Hand-Bryant says the project provided students the opportunity to see Janet’s approach to printmaking, learn different techniques, and talk about the technical side of the CMYK process she uses.