Until the end of the semester, an emotionally carved exhibit is on display at UW-Superior’s Experimental Gallery in Holden Fine & Applied Arts Center. The exhibit, called “Adjuration,” mixes the two dictionary definitions into a message of longing and haunting hope. Duluth Artist Shannon Hickok created life-sized prints and carvings, as well as smaller multi-layered prints, to tell her personal experiences that’s equally as layered and the creation process itself.
“The emotional act of creating an artwork is further emphasized through the physical act of the printmaking process,” wrote Hickok in her artist statement. “Only when the ink becomes one with the paper is the image reborn again, coming alive at long last.”
Hickok uses five different screen-printing layers in her work titled, “The Promise of Hope.” The screenprint depicts a woman entangled still with her last two golden string. The woman figure reaches upwards, keeping the strings connected to herself as dark brown and black floral wave surround the figure. This floral pattern returns in all of “Adjuration” artworks. In “The Hope of Alchemy,” Hickok uses the string of hope motif to show her woman figure protection a golden hart, as everything else seem to consume her.
“The search for self, following loss, comes alive through every fiber of my being,” wrote Hickok in her artist statement. “To move forward through grief… the feelings of seeking, longing, haunting, and hoping become strength, connectedness, rebirth, and celebration.”
