Annalise Gratovich : Carrying Things From Home
Join us April Art Walk as we proudly present the work of Austin-based printmaker Annalise Gratovich.
Annalise Gratovich creates her finely crafted prints by hand from start to finish, carving wood, etching metal, dyeing paper, and using manual printing presses to create multiple originals. Each piece is printed onarchival papers using oil based inks and hand dyed papers she produces in her studio. Annalise operates as a self publisher out of Austin, Texas and travels frequently across the country as a visiting artist and speaker and to publish prints with esteemed print shops.
Annalise’s body of work “Carrying Things From Home” is series of large, multi-block, relief prints exploring themes of family and heritage.
“The impetus for the series “Carrying Things From Home” was the flight of my father and his parents from Ukraine during WWII. They left abruptly in night with what they could carry. War, displacement, and migration severed our familial and cultural ties and created a universally understood mythology that my practice explores. How do we sustain our ancestral ties and sense of self, and how to we hybridize to become at one with a new homeland. I am a daughter of the Ukrainian diaspora as well as a Texan.
The figures in my work are totemic beings that explore personal and cultural identity- they are vessels based off the form of the stacking matryoshka doll. They are adorned in textiles and patterns that are informed by indigenous Ukrainian textiles, embroidery, and ceremonial dress, as well as vintage American western wear. The patterns are used to allude to distant homelands- places that are lost or cannot be returned to. Flora and fauna of the American South and Southwest selectively adorn the figures or surround them, rooting the figures in place, to a new homeland, and symbolize interdependency, resiliency, and generational survival.”
Opening reception is April 10, from 6:00 to 9:00. Work will be on display and available by appointment until April 22.
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