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Sharp Points | OS Projects |Feb 11 - apr 8, 2023
Opening reception February 11, 2023, 1 - 3 pm
Gallery statement:
The artwork is the culmination of a multifaceted practice grounded in Watters’ career as an environmental graphic designer, which has given her experience working with a range of materials and craft techniques. All her projects require extensive research and many hours of cutting, gluing and pinning before they are assembled. Watters also fabricates nearly all her own materials and employs printmaking techniques to create textures, layers and repetitive patterns that lend depth and complexity to the work.
The marbled paper Watters creates is specific to traditional Italian marbling patterns, and the gold elements in her works employ traditional underpainting and gold-leaf gilding. Watters combines these traditional techniques with digital fabrication tools to increase efficiency and position her practice in a contemporary context. The work that results is labor intensive, process driven and committed to rigorous craftsmanship.
Press:
COLOSsAL Magazine review
Fragmented virtues | trout museum of art
Jan 20 - mar 26, 2023
Fragmented Virtues Carey Watters 2022 TMA Contemporary Best-of-Show Artist
My artwork is highly personal and mythical in nature. I work with ancient iconography–forgotten saints and anonymous korai–whose erasure over time serve as a metaphor for my own experience as a woman. In the broken postures and enigmatic faces of forgotten sculpted women, I find evidence of struggle and inner strength. In my artwork, I re-animate these characters, making them powerful heroines engaged in epic struggles. Their bodies are stenciled with designs and sewn patterns. Dangling red threads suggest spurting and dripping blood. Figures are encased in jagged edges that glow with luminous energy and protect like barbed wire. Curving, twisting, and fragmented moments unfold and hover above women’s heads signifying the constant battle between intellect and autthenticity.
Tiny Cuts | MOWA | Jun 26 – Sep 12, 2021
Press:
"Most artists bridle when their masterpieces are referred to as “craft,” while craftspeople shrug and smile when their work is called “art.” Carey Watters stands at the crossroads of both disciplines, embracing the art references while knowing that her technique draws equally from the school of craft."
- Mike Muckian, Shepherd Express
THe Money Show | SAint Kate, the arts hotel | Apr 10 – Sep 12, 2021
The curators start from the premise that money is an idea that shapes contemporary life and present works that invite viewers to consider cash, labor, and capital. “To speak about money without using cliches is nearly impossible. It makes the world go round. Another day, another dollar. Worth its weight in gold. And so on. Money is ultimately an idea. A symbol of value we can use to exchange goods and services. Money is capital and debt, something to save and something to spend. In this sense, it is a fundamental part of humanity. At its best, a crisp ten dollar bill inside a birthday card from one’s grandmother, it is delightful. At its worst, it is an excuse for deep cruelty, a permission to allow suffering to go unaddressed. At the beginning of the 21st century, late-stage capitalism has allowed money to become a powerful social force that influences nearly every aspect of our lives,” says Curator Ric Kasini Kadour.
Excavation: new work by carey watters | uw-Parkside | Oct 15 – Nov 12, 2021
Carey Watter’s work is mythical in nature. Insect pins and needle and thread connect age-old imagery and iconography to her personal narratives in a process that is time-consuming and labor-intensive. She dissects collected cast-off printed materials into thousands of tiny cut pieces of paper, each one a precious fragment of a lost whole. From this collected ephemera Watters conjures the feminist histories of forgotten saints and unknown women whose stories twist and turn in complex ways. Working in the quiet of her basement studio she slowly builds her paper reliefs. She translates her obsessive thoughts, desires, and feelings of marginalization into distress signals that are sent out into the world.
Marbling and Bookbinding sampler| Peninsula School of Art | jul 21-24, 2021
Student Posts:
“Our instructor was Carey Watters, who is an Associate Professor of Art at UW-Parkside and she was very knowledgeable and had a very laid back style. The official class description said we would be marbling for one day and then do bookbinding for the remaining days but the class got so into the paper marbling that we just did it everyday. And we got better everyday because of that approach.” ~ Jeanne Heuer
Wall Poems of Racine | Wall Poem #2 | 1346 Washington Avenue, Racine
The University of Wisconsin-Parkside and ArtRoot, along with other community partners, have teamed up to showcase local literary talent in conjunction with Professor Carey Watters’ advanced graphic design students.
Annually, students develop and submit their designs to a committee that incorporates their chosen poem excerpt. After feedback and modifications, the committee then chooses the next Wall Poem.
Press:
Belt Magazine article