(Portrait courtesy of Sarah R. Bloom)
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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 (b. SugarLand, TX) is a queer artist from Philadelphia who currently lives and works in Chicago. While earning her BA magna cum laude from Muhlenberg College as an Art and English double major, Kramlich produced the first cross-major creative honors thesis (paintings + poems) in the history of Muhlenberg’s English and Art departments. At this time, she also became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a national honors society. Kramlich then moved to Philadelphia and earned her MFA summa cum laude in Studio Art from Moore College of Art & Design. After 10 years of teaching as an adjunct at Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania State University, and Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, Kramlich moved from Philly to Chicago in 2023 to take her position as the tenure-track Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Elmhurst University.
Kramlich’s artwork has always been language-based, combining visual and verbal languages into complex signification systems. It most often takes the form of 2D mixed-media encaustic work – though she also works in 3D / installations. Her artistic practice involves research on semiotics, poetry (especially ekphrasis), Post-Structuralism, Linguistics, Intersectional Feminism, and the history of text-based American art.
Kramlich has lectured at institutions such as PAFA, attended residencies in Vermont and Ireland, and shown her artwork both nationally and internationally in Spain, France, and Ireland. Recent solo exhibitions include A Capitalist Plaid in 2024 at Pink Noise Projects and Mark My Words in 2023 at the Barbara Crawford Gallery, both in Philadelphia. In 2022, the PHL International Airport commissioned Kramlich to create a painting which was scanned and printed mural-scale (7.5ft x 22ft). Notable group exhibitions include Woodmere Art Museum’s 2023 Juried Exhibition, Maus Contemporary’s 2021 exhibition Capitolism: The Normalization of Political Violence in the United States (with Willie Cole, et al), Rowan University Gallery’s 2013 exhibition entitled Dialogic (with John Giorno, Jaume Plensa, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, et al), and the 4-person installation-based exhibition entitled PaperScapes at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 2017 (with Sun Young Kang).
Dawn Kramlich (b. SugarLand, TX) is a queer artist from Philadelphia who currently lives and works in Chicago. While earning her BA magna cum laude from Muhlenberg College as an Art and English double major, Kramlich produced the first cross-major creative honors thesis (paintings + poems) in the history of Muhlenberg’s English and Art departments. At this time, she also became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a national honors society. Kramlich then moved to Philadelphia and earned her MFA summa cum laude in Studio Art from Moore College of Art & Design. After 10 years of teaching as an adjunct at Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania State University, and Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, Kramlich moved from Philly to Chicago in 2023 to take her position as the tenure-track Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Elmhurst University.
Kramlich’s artwork has always been language-based, combining visual and verbal languages into complex signification systems. It most often takes the form of 2D mixed-media encaustic work – though she also works in 3D / installations. Her artistic practice involves research on semiotics, poetry (especially ekphrasis), Post-Structuralism, Linguistics, Intersectional Feminism, and the history of text-based American art.
Kramlich has lectured at institutions such as PAFA, attended residencies in Vermont and Ireland, and shown her artwork both nationally and internationally in Spain, France, and Ireland. Recent solo exhibitions include A Capitalist Plaid in 2024 at Pink Noise Projects and Mark My Words in 2023 at the Barbara Crawford Gallery, both in Philadelphia. In 2022, the PHL International Airport commissioned Kramlich to create a painting which was scanned and printed mural-scale (7.5ft x 22ft). Notable group exhibitions include Woodmere Art Museum’s 2023 Juried Exhibition, Maus Contemporary’s 2021 exhibition Capitolism: The Normalization of Political Violence in the United States (with Willie Cole, et al), Rowan University Gallery’s 2013 exhibition entitled Dialogic (with John Giorno, Jaume Plensa, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, et al), and the 4-person installation-based exhibition entitled PaperScapes at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 2017 (with Sun Young Kang).