(Portrait courtesy of Sarah R. Bloom)
|
Statement:
My interdisciplinary practice combines three approaches: materiality, palimpsests, and relationships between text and image. As a language-based artist, I employ verbal and visual languages on a level playing field and use combinations of their different semiotic powers to create synergy. My materials and processes (encaustic, inlay, laser-cutting) involve translucency and perforation to explore presence and absence. By using layers to gradually reveal or obscure discernible forms, my works embody the layers of power and influence that words and images exert on us. The text in my work comes from personal experiences as a queer woman in the USA. I use words from emotionally charged memories, phrases spoken to me by men, or edits of such moments which make their power dynamics more explicit. The imagery, on the other hand, comes from symbols and formal interactions of mark-making inherent in lettering systems: pattern, symmetry resulting from actual or implied grids, shape arising from negative space. My work engages language as metaphor for both the individual and the cultural systems one endures. I poetically weave and layer words and images in ways that expose patterns. The steady Digital Age onslaught of text + image combinations motivates my intermingling of verbal and visual languages, especially with the speed at which symbols and messages change while influencing how we navigate our daily lives. Language—how we use, relate to, and relate through it—is far more powerful than our culture typically concedes. Words and images appear and disappear before we can process their effects. According to linguistic relativity, our native tongues shape our cognitive and cultural worldviews. Words create conflict, facilitate community, incite action. I examine the possibilities inherent in language to decode the power structures which underlie it—because few things are as powerful and political as language. |
Bio:
Dawn Kramlich (she/her, b. 1987, Houston, TX) is a queer artist from Philadelphia who currently lives and works in Chicago. Her work has always been language-based, using visual and verbal language on a level playing field to create synergy among their different semiotic modes. Kramlich earned her BA magna cum laude with honors in both majors (English and Art) from Muhlenberg College (2009) and her MFA summa cum laude in Studio Art from Moore College of Art & Design (2013). While working toward her BA at Muhlenberg College, Kramlich produced the first cross-major creative honors thesis (paintings + poems) in the history of Muhlenberg’s English and Art departments; she was then inducted into the national honors society Phi Beta Kappa. Kramlich has given lectures at institutions including PAFA and Main Line Art Center (Philadelphia), attended artist residencies at Burren College of Art (Ireland) and Vermont Studio Center, and exhibited widely across the USA and internationally (Spain, France, England, Ireland). Her first solo exhibition, Mark My Words at the Barbara Crawford Gallery (2023), was followed by A Capitalist Plaid at Pink Noise Projects (2024), both in Philadelphia. Recent group and juried exhibitions include Parlour & Ramp (Chicago), St. Louis Artists Guild (St. Louis, MO), Perry Lawson Fine Art (Nyack, NY), and 6311arts (Chicago). In 2022, the PHL International Airport commissioned a painting by Kramlich to be scanned and printed mural-scale (7.5ft x 22ft). Kramlich’s work is in public collections including the Hoyt Art Center (New Castle, PA) and The Logan Hotel (Philadelphia, PA), and numerous private collections. Notable group exhibitions include Maus Contemporary’s Capitolism: The Normalization of Political Violence in the US (2021, w/Willie Cole, et al), Rowan University Gallery’s Dialogic (2013, w/John Giorno, Meg Hitchcock, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, Jaume Plensa, et al), and the 4-person exhibition PaperScapes at the Philadelphia Art Alliance (2017, w/Sun Young Kang, et al).
Dawn Kramlich (she/her, b. 1987, Houston, TX) is a queer artist from Philadelphia who currently lives and works in Chicago. Her work has always been language-based, using visual and verbal language on a level playing field to create synergy among their different semiotic modes. Kramlich earned her BA magna cum laude with honors in both majors (English and Art) from Muhlenberg College (2009) and her MFA summa cum laude in Studio Art from Moore College of Art & Design (2013). While working toward her BA at Muhlenberg College, Kramlich produced the first cross-major creative honors thesis (paintings + poems) in the history of Muhlenberg’s English and Art departments; she was then inducted into the national honors society Phi Beta Kappa. Kramlich has given lectures at institutions including PAFA and Main Line Art Center (Philadelphia), attended artist residencies at Burren College of Art (Ireland) and Vermont Studio Center, and exhibited widely across the USA and internationally (Spain, France, England, Ireland). Her first solo exhibition, Mark My Words at the Barbara Crawford Gallery (2023), was followed by A Capitalist Plaid at Pink Noise Projects (2024), both in Philadelphia. Recent group and juried exhibitions include Parlour & Ramp (Chicago), St. Louis Artists Guild (St. Louis, MO), Perry Lawson Fine Art (Nyack, NY), and 6311arts (Chicago). In 2022, the PHL International Airport commissioned a painting by Kramlich to be scanned and printed mural-scale (7.5ft x 22ft). Kramlich’s work is in public collections including the Hoyt Art Center (New Castle, PA) and The Logan Hotel (Philadelphia, PA), and numerous private collections. Notable group exhibitions include Maus Contemporary’s Capitolism: The Normalization of Political Violence in the US (2021, w/Willie Cole, et al), Rowan University Gallery’s Dialogic (2013, w/John Giorno, Meg Hitchcock, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, Jaume Plensa, et al), and the 4-person exhibition PaperScapes at the Philadelphia Art Alliance (2017, w/Sun Young Kang, et al).