A printmaking artist from Minneapolis will be occupying the Arts Retreat house for the first few weeks of April 2015.
Angela Sprunger is an artist, educator, and administrator. She creates socially engaged prints and objects to agitate cultural complacency. In the past year, Sprunger completed a public art project through a Corridor Collaboration Grant from the City of Saint Paul and had a solo show of print work at Franklin Arts Center Resident Artist Gallery in Brainerd. She is also part of the Art Swap team, a portable community event that invites participants to bring a work of art they made to exchange for a piece in Art Swap’s rotating collection.
When asked about her plans during this residency, Angela responded, “I am exploring connections between my art practices and experiencing the natural world. The paper and woodblocks I use to make art come from trees. You may see me walking around town carrying a log and a tripod. It’s an exercise to think about where my materials come from and how I might return what I create from them to the natural world.”
She added, “I’m also finding inspiration from re-watching Twin Peaks, the David Lynch T.V. show from the early 1990s. It was such a strange show and combined so many disparate things (detective story, melodrama, surrealism, mysticism, nature, humor, musical score) into something that worked. There’s a character in the show simply called the Log Lady who takes her log everywhere! Twin Peaks is also a lumber town with a café that makes amazing pies. So, New York Mills has a few things in common with it. The show is making me think about how to combine the different ways in which I often work (printmaking, drawing, painting, sewing, nature) into something singular.”
Be sure to keep an eye out around New York Mills for our very own “Visiting Log Lady”, and if you see her, say hello.
Check out Angela’s work at www.angelasprunger.com. Also, you can follow what she’s doing here on instagram @angelasprunger. She will be posting one photo a day using the tag #newyorkmillsMN.
