August 23 - September 30, 2023
Bedside | Emily Orzech
Artist Statement:
Bedside is made up of selected work from my series Family History, which was catalyzed by my late partner’s illness and my experience navigating the healthcare system. I am interested in the liminal spaces we inhabit in the process of illness and caregiving. Memory of this time is mutable, fabricated out of visual fragments and habitual gestures, like a muscle memory that lingers long after the events have passed.
In Turn, for example, I re-enacted the motions of turning someone bed bound using a blanket. Since my memory is of the physical motion rather than of a particular moment, I photographed myself re-performing these actions and then transformed these gestures into screenprints. In other prints, such as Refrigerator: Cachexia, the space itself is pieced together out of memory and a few photographs. Some colors and textures are heightened, some sections are elided to fit the room within the space of the panel. I use the process of photography coupled with the piecing together of the image that happens through the printing process, not to recreate the memory, but rather to discover these distortions and elisions.
Some works not only focus on the metaphorical gaps of memory, but the more literal gaps of care. Waiting for a Bed is a memory of spending the night in the ER because there were no beds available in the sub-ICU. The text in the background of Decisions is a pros and cons list for navigating healthcare that was out of network for insurance while taking leave without pay.
Modifying a technique invented by professor Dennis O’Neil of the Corcoran Institute of Art, I have developed a process of layering upwards of thirty coats of screenprint on panel, sometimes adding graphite between the printed layers. Because of the hardness of the particular ink, I am able to then selectively sand away the print, revealing the layers below. In this way I work using both additive and subtractive methods. The layering and sanding away of these images collapses the passage of time and mimics the simultaneous clarity and intangibility of these memories.
Artist Bio:
Emily Orzech is a printmaker who works in screenprint, relief, and mixed-media. She has attended residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, Kala, Zea Mays Printmaking, SPAR in Russia, and Spark Box Studios in Ontario, Canada, as well as a yearlong Fulbright in Lithography at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China. Her solo shows include Susceptible Proteins at Millsaps College’s Hall Gallery; The Time Being at Smith College’s Oresman Gallery; Rush Hour at 2.04 Gallery in St Petersburg, Russia; Urban Village at the University of North Carolina Greensboro’s Gatewood Gallery, in Greensboro, North Carolina; and Translated Cities, at the American Center, in Beijing, China. She is currently an Associate Professor and Department Chair at Muhlenberg College where she teaches printmaking.
Bedside is made up of selected work from my series Family History, which was catalyzed by my late partner’s illness and my experience navigating the healthcare system. I am interested in the liminal spaces we inhabit in the process of illness and caregiving. Memory of this time is mutable, fabricated out of visual fragments and habitual gestures, like a muscle memory that lingers long after the events have passed.
In Turn, for example, I re-enacted the motions of turning someone bed bound using a blanket. Since my memory is of the physical motion rather than of a particular moment, I photographed myself re-performing these actions and then transformed these gestures into screenprints. In other prints, such as Refrigerator: Cachexia, the space itself is pieced together out of memory and a few photographs. Some colors and textures are heightened, some sections are elided to fit the room within the space of the panel. I use the process of photography coupled with the piecing together of the image that happens through the printing process, not to recreate the memory, but rather to discover these distortions and elisions.
Some works not only focus on the metaphorical gaps of memory, but the more literal gaps of care. Waiting for a Bed is a memory of spending the night in the ER because there were no beds available in the sub-ICU. The text in the background of Decisions is a pros and cons list for navigating healthcare that was out of network for insurance while taking leave without pay.
Modifying a technique invented by professor Dennis O’Neil of the Corcoran Institute of Art, I have developed a process of layering upwards of thirty coats of screenprint on panel, sometimes adding graphite between the printed layers. Because of the hardness of the particular ink, I am able to then selectively sand away the print, revealing the layers below. In this way I work using both additive and subtractive methods. The layering and sanding away of these images collapses the passage of time and mimics the simultaneous clarity and intangibility of these memories.
Artist Bio:
Emily Orzech is a printmaker who works in screenprint, relief, and mixed-media. She has attended residencies including the Vermont Studio Center, Kala, Zea Mays Printmaking, SPAR in Russia, and Spark Box Studios in Ontario, Canada, as well as a yearlong Fulbright in Lithography at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China. Her solo shows include Susceptible Proteins at Millsaps College’s Hall Gallery; The Time Being at Smith College’s Oresman Gallery; Rush Hour at 2.04 Gallery in St Petersburg, Russia; Urban Village at the University of North Carolina Greensboro’s Gatewood Gallery, in Greensboro, North Carolina; and Translated Cities, at the American Center, in Beijing, China. She is currently an Associate Professor and Department Chair at Muhlenberg College where she teaches printmaking.
