April Bleakney, Ann Marie Kennedy, and Taro Takizawa have been working on projects in the Morgan’s studios. They will present short talks, addressing their conceptual, technical, and artistic influences as well as the processes they experimented with during their residencies.

Pizza, beverages, and an interesting dialogue will be provided!

As always, our artist talks are free + open to all.

April Bleakney:

I view screen printing as my core, using both photography and hand drawn elements as an underlying foundation, often supplemented with painting, collage, and stencil into mixed media works. I am increasingly drawn to these types of pieces for the fluidity and texture they bring juxtaposed with the flats brought by screen.

As different media can inform each other within a single piece or in body of art, so can seemingly opposing themes. With a background in history as well as art, I think a lot about time, memory, and systems of change. I am drawn to themes that are inherently full of tension, yet exist everywhere: decay / growth, change / nostalgia, addition / erasure, memory / loss. All ideas that speak to, interact with, and cannot exist without each other. On a broad level, all of these themes all speak to power in some sense and how different forces move in this constant flux – shaping our relationships, our immediate environments and our larger world. These take many forms in my work: time, place, family, genetics, personal, political, and environmental.

Ann Marie Kennedy:

My art practice often involves working with a collage-type process using papermaking. I pour a base pulp, usually overbeaten abaca, into a deckle box submerged in water, and arrange layers of materials in the slurry. I cut up textile materials, older artworks, papers and combine them with fresh plant matter, fibers and earth pigments. This allows me to explore impulses of order, arrangement, composition and how the flow of paper pulp might disrupt this endeavor. Recent themes are the structures of gardens, and textile patterns.

During my residency, I’d like to explore the boundaries and possibilities of how my work and process might change according to studio and place. In particular, I’d like to explore how using stencils and overlays, may create a more layered surface. I also plan to explore gardens, plant life and the urban landscape near the studio and combine these with observed compositions, to create works that respond to the particularities of place.

Taro Takizawa:

Taro Takizawa is an artist who focuses on printmaking, wall vinyl installations, drawings and 2D designs. Born in Japan, he has been making images connecting what he has experienced in Japan where he grew up and, in the U.S. since he moved here in 2002 and currently resides. His works contains both western and eastern aesthetics with appreciation of traditional printmaking processes and mark making. He is fascinated with blending the boundaries of contemporary studio practice and traditional processes, printmaking and installations, influenced by traditional Japanese patterns from textile designs, architecture and crafts.

He received with his BFA with a printmaking emphasis from Central Michigan University in 2011, and MFA in printmaking from Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts in 2017. While working on his master’s degree, Takizawa has participated in multiple short residencies and exhibitions such as Chautauqua Institution School of Art, its student exhibition at Fowler-Kellogg Art Center, PARADOX European Fine Art Forum and its exhibition at CK Zamek in Poznan, Poland; and ArtPrize 10 at Grand Rapids Public Museum. And recently participated in Haystack Art School Collaborative conference in Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine and Syracuse University Turner Semester in LA, Los Angeles, CA, and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in Ithaca, NY.