Dawn Kramlich

Lives and works in Chicago, IL, USA

Artist 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...

Artwork