Felicia van Bork



 
 
 
 

(Click to enlarge)

How to Be the Earth

How to Be the Earth

How to See the Unseen

How to See the Unseen

How to Listen

How to Listen

How to Keep a Journal

How to Keep a Journal

How to Inspire the King

How to Inspire the King

How to Braid Her Hair

How to Braid Her Hair


 

Artist’s Statement

One thing I especially appreciate about Americans is their confidence that they can figure out anything. I am happy to belong to a society of do-it-yourself-ers. We think we can easily learn to fix governments, relationships, health problems, language barriers, spiritual crises, stuck windows, clogged drains, and bad singing. Education is undergoing a sea change as we students of life lead a global trend that assumes that, with the right online courses, YouTube videos, self-help books, Google searches, home improvement shows, and crowd-sourcing, we can do it all. We are fundamentally democratic and idealistic when it comes to fixing our lives and ourselves. But what the data-miners know is that we reveal our true selves by what we seek, not what we find.

Monotype prints are prints made by inking a smooth, featureless plate, manipulating the ink, and pressing a sheet of paper onto the ink. A single print may receive multiple layers of colors and marks. I use clear acrylic plates, oil-based etching ink and printmaking paper.

I make monotype prints on an etching press and use them as raw material for collages. During the printmaking process, I seek to surprise myself with new marks and color-layers, and these personal marks lend themselves to the imagery in the collages, which is abstract or semi-abstract, narrative, and landscape-based. My collage series, “How to Fix Absolutely Anything,” consists of over 100 works, which have grown from their original 11” x 11” format to 40” x 40” and larger.”

The medium for all the works is “monotype collage.” The photos by Christopher Clamp are courtesy of Jerald Melberg Gallery.

 

 

Felicia van Bork earned her MFA at MassArt in 2009 and has been teaching studio art at the college level since 1995. Her monotype collages are represented by Jerald Melberg Gallery in Charlotte, NC, where her collages are exhibited alongside works by Robert Motherwell and Romare Bearden. Her art has been shown at national art fairs including Downtown Art Fair, Art Miami, Art Wynwood and the Dallas Art Fair. van Bork has been honored with numerous residencies, awards and commissions. Most recently, she was awarded a sixth residency fellowship by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (July-August, 2014). van Bork is closely associated with the McColl Center for Art + Innovation: From 2011-2012, she was an 11-month Affiliate Artist at the Center. As a founding member and the leader of the artist group, Core, Felicia van Bork organized the major exhibition, Currencies: Real and Imagined, held in the main galleries of the McColl Center, December 2013-January 2014. van Bork manages the Center’s Printmaking studio, and teaches workshops in monotype printmaking. She has taught as a Resident Artist at the Center’s Innovation Institute. As a professor of studio art, she has taught at at Penn State Erie the Behrend College; Columbia University; Davidson College; and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC. She currently teaches painting at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, NC. Her art can be found on the covers of many published works including books of poems and literary magazines. You can see more of her work at www.feliciavanbork.com.