Karin Bruckner, an artist and teacher of printmaking, was recently granted a four-month residency to create a new body of work. The result—an installation comprised of dimensional paintings and structures—is currently on view at the Carter Burden Covello Center for Older Adults, in El Barrio. As one of her students over the past several years, I was intrigued by the variety, scale and integrity of the work. She shared her thoughts in the following email discussion last week:

Peggy Roalf: The title of this large installation, By Standers, On Lookers and Hangers On]is intriguing. What is its meaning to you?

Karin Bruckner: Together, as part of the work, we hang in and hang on. We see and are seen. We watch and are watched. The silhouettes that populate the paintings are us—both everyone and no one—equal humans struggling, striving, and surviving. In this work, I am processing the personal and the political. I make art to hold on to a smidgen of sanity. I can't look away, yet I don't have the answers. In order not to lose my mind, I make things and I teach. I try to shine a bit of light into my corner of the universe. 

PR: This is a large-scale installation that transforms a wide corridor into something of a tunnel of hope for an uncertain time. I’d like to find out more about the process that took you from the printmaking arena of paper and ink to a more environmental approach.

KB: This body of work completed during the Residency is a way-station on a journey, rather than an arrival at a destination. The residency transformed me and my way of working, mainly by providing momentum and a newfound process of generating work from sketch to painting to print to installation. I entered the studio thinking, "I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing it. " I exited with, "I don't know how I got here, but here it is. "

My approach grew in size and scope. All I had were some unfinished panels and the knowledge that I wanted to paint rather than print, and to push myself forward in my practice…. My former architect-self remembered to pay attention to the space and work with it. The scale of the small panels I began the residency with started to feel too constraining for what the work needed. I decided to break out and develop a concept for an installation. The paintings proved to be the perfect sketches for something much larger. My concept was for one plane to morph and fold into another—silhouetted figures casting long shadows, a figure-ground construct coming to life. The whole scenario is finally completed by the viewers themselves, wandering the hallway and mingling with the installation.

PR: How did the timing of this residency fit in with life in general? I’m thinking about what you said about giving up the studio space next to your apartment, and what you once mentioned about having a printing press where most people would put a sofa.

KB: The residency was offered at a very opportune moment. Since I teach Printmaking at Carter Burden’s Covello Center I casually mentioned last year that I was planning on giving up my studio space due to mounting political uncertainty, rising rents and the mere fact that I can’t be in two places working at the same time. 

The Residency was always meant to be for artists without a studio space and people who were interested in connecting or being connected to the community, which definitely applied to me. One thing begets another—I will now be moving my large press to Covello’s Printmaking Studio to expand the printmaking offerings—so what came out of the community comes back to the community.  

I am very grateful to have Covello as a sort of artistic home away from home, because it helps me enormously to navigate the moment in time we find ourselves in.  Community has rarely been more important than now.  And perhaps at this point, I can contemplate the sofa in place of the printing press in my apartment. 

PR: What was the greatest challenge for you in moving from printmaking, with all of  the accompanying machinery, shop ethics/safety concerns, and sticky ink to painting, where there are basically no rules?

KB: The greatest challenge is to have to do without the element of the ‘happy accident’ that often characterizes the printmaking process or trying to emulate chance elements in a different way.  I could not have begun to paint without my more than twenty-year practice of printmaking.

Printmaking was a natural thing to gravitate towards after a professional foray into architecture, picking up on all the constraints you mentioned in your question.  However, printmaking remarkably helped free me from the constraints. You have to know the rules, but once you know them you can break them and push boundaries.  The things you can’t foresee in printmaking, the ‘happy accidents’ were what propelled me forward. They taught me to go with the flow, to engage in a call and response approach to making art.

Layering and working with stencils is what I carried over into this residency, learning to trust the process in a different way. I leaned into my ‘Jackson Pollock’ moment of throwing, dripping and creating texture with paint, fully embracing the third dimension, that can only be implied in printmaking, It is like coming full circle. Coming from working within the rules to break them to going from no rules and bringing them back in. Ultimately my work is about chaos and order 

PR: Have you found any particular cross-fertilization with your printmaking and teaching since having this residency experience?

KB: There is cross-fertilization in everything you do. Whatever you expand into, goes back to what you’ve been doing all along. It is about expanding your toolbox. You may never solve the problem, but you will have more tools to go at it with. Interestingly enough it was the things I always tell my students that I had to remind myself of in the residency: go with the flow, make a mark and see where it takes you, throw things down and see what sticks, be open to what happens, rejoice in having a problem that will make you find a solution.  

Easier said than done.  The residency drove those points home for me and I have another level of confidence about making artwork, and to not overthink things, make a move and deal with the results in a creative way. Oftentimes the resolution comes after you think you destroyed something. It will end up with more depth and complexity than you thought possible. I carry that back into the class room.

I am a problem solver at heart—the classroom is a never-ending source of questions and exploration with others.  Printmaking is to some extent a team sport, while painting is a more of a solitary pursuit. 

PR: What advice would you give to artists wanting to 'break the mold' whose work is generally based on observation? 

KB: Trust the process—that is, if they are interested in ‘breaking the mold’. Not everyone has a need to do that.  You have to find your truth and hold on to that. One piece of wisdom that was offered to me during the residency was the consideration of the space you are working in. If you have the space to work large, go for it. I was told that "every artist should have the opportunity to work on something larger than themselves; even if you do it only once and then never do it again. Every artist should have this experience that involves getting physical with their work”. I’d like to pass this on—it does change your work. It changes you. In the end, all of it is based on observation, whether it is something in front of you or inside of you. It’s what YOU make of it.

Karin Bruckner  www.kbmatter.com

Carter Burden Network/Leonard Covello Center Older Adult Center, 312 East 109^th Street, Gallery on FL3, New York, NY Hours: Monday-Sunday 10am - 4pm

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