The Kansas State University Department of Art will present the workshop “Transforming Printmaking Through Chemical Innovation” by Shelley Thorstensen from 2:30-5:30 pm on Wednesday, March 27 in room 319 Willard Hall. Thorstensen is the NEA Project Visiting Artist in Residence from Monday, March 25–Friday, March 29. Admission is free and open to the public.

Shelley Thorstensen was born in 1953 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. As a child she lived in Salzburg, Austria and Stuttgart, Germany before moving to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She currently lives in Oxford, Pennsylvania where she is the Director of Printmakers Open Forum.

Thorstensen's work has been described by Edward Sozanski of the Philadelphia Inquirer as “romantic abstraction” and that her prints are “for the most part palpably emotional effusions”. Artist Michelle Wilson writes “Each piece by Thorstensen is not a single experience; instead it is a concentration of ideas, encounters, and emotions. Her conceptual roots are in nature and its experience, but go deeper than everyday reality. Viewing her work, one winds through a labyrinthine configuration, where process, pattern, and lines become conduits and psychopomps in her visual idiom. Thorstensen presents in each piece a simultaneity of linked consequences, twists and turns of the journey of the soul.”

Thorstensen has an undergraduate degree in Experimental Studies from Syracuse University, School of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse, New York and a graduate degree in Printmaking from Tyler School of Art of Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

These events are presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.  

This event is a part of the Kansas State University Department of Art Visiting Artists Series for the 2018-2019 Season.