Exhibition

WATERSHED – Taryn McMahon

EXHIBITION DETAILS:
LOCATION: Grace Ross Shanley Gallery
OPENING DATE: Sunday, April 14, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: Sunday, April 14, 2024 from 2:00 – 4:00 PM
CLOSING DATE: Sunday, May 19, 2024

Artist Statement

Watershed explores the entanglements between the human and nonhuman through Northeast Ohio’s waterways. I present everyday landscapes, such as the Cuyahoga River and surrounding creeks, as compelling ecological sites that reveal the underlying fantasies and overlooked realities shaping how we interact with the natural world.

The monotypes and installations layer silhouettes of objects found on the banks of the Cuyahoga River and Breakneck Creek, both part of the Middle Cuyahoga Watershed. These highly layered monotypes are created from an index of silhouettes that are endlessly reprinted and recombined as a metaphor for an evolving and limitless ecology. Impressions (Cuyahoga River) and Impressions (Breakneck Creek) are printed canvas banners of enlarged cyanotypes made from direct exposures of the same found objects. Combining both naturally occurring and human-generated items creates printed environments that point to the current state of ecology as one in which the human and nonhuman have become conflated and intertwined in the face of unprecedented ecological change.

Artist Bio

Taryn McMahon grew up in New Jersey and received her BFA from The Pennsylvania State University. She attended the University of Iowa, where she received an MA and MFA in Printmaking. McMahon has received numerous awards for her work including an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Arts Challenge, Puffin Foundation grant, and Denbo Fellowship. Her work has been shown in venues such as the Print Center, New York, NY, and Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY, among many others. She currently serves as Associate Professor of Studio Art and co-area head of Print Media and Photography at Kent State University in Kent, OH.

McMahon was also one of our most recent Artists-in-Residence (January 2024), completing a series of new monotypes with us for her Impressions (Dunkard Creek) project. Click here to watch the Artist Talk she gave during her Residency.