Statement

As an artist/explorer, Erin's work seeks to lessen the distance between “out there” and “down here”; what exists out in the vast cosmos she wants to be able to hold in her hands. She continuously investigates materials that support this underlining desire, and as a result, her studio practice expands to include: graphic design, book arts, papermaking, printmaking, and fiber arts.

In recent work, she is especially drawn to a new process that allows her to manipulate and participate in creating her own “big bangs” by combining powdered pigment and baking soda with vinegar and infusing that reaction into sheets of handmade paper. Along with this process, she adapts Ukrainian folk art traditions from her ancestry such as the use of embroidery, color symbolism, and natural dyes to create work that is simultaneously celestial and tangible, immense and intimate.

Biography

Erin Malkowski is a graphic designer, book artist, printmaker, and book conservation technician. Erin received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Printmaking and Graphic Design from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 2010 and completed her Master of Fine Arts in Book Arts and Printmaking from the University of the Arts in 2014. She currently lives in Central Wisconsin with her husband and two cats, Dr. Leo Spaceman and Waffles.