Christa Wolf
4785 Satterly Hill Road
Burdett, NY 14818 USA
Web: www.Ink-Shop.org
Email: Christa@ink-shop.org
Email: Tony_Ruiz@cornell.edu
Portfolio Presentation: "Prints from ink-shop.org"
As a German living and working in the USA, I experience different cultural influences in my daily life as well as my artwork. Most of the time this is fruitful, enjoyable, but it can also be frustrating. How can I to understand the other, how can I express what I want to say. How can I share different backgrounds, and his-stories. Often, I feel estranged, not being able to fully understand the other, nor to be understood. But then there is laughter, new words and images, possibilities for connecting with and through art.
As a founder and director of The Ink Shop printmaking Center and Olive Branch Press, a not for profit workshop and gallery space in Ithaca, NY, I have the opportunity to bring people of different countries and cultures together. Partly, we teach each other, partly we share and exchange portfolios. We exchange shows with other printmaking groups like The in Washington Printmakers and The Rochester Printclub. We have invited Irish and Icelandic printmakers to show with us in Ithaca, and we will show with them. Artists from others countries join us for a while and teach and work with us. What enrichments. Crossings borders, in art as in life, has been a traditional experience of art and artist, especially printmakers. It is as necessary in these time and days, as it has been in the past.
CHRISTA WOLF was born in Germany. She studied art and printmaking at Berlin University and received a MFA from Cornell University in Printmaking in 1996. She taught lithography at Cornell and Syracuse University. As one of the founders of The Ink Shop Printmaking Center Olive Branch Press, she serves as Vice President on the Board of Directors. She is in charge of the exhibitions at the Ink Shop Gallery and the publications of the Olive Branch Press. She teaches printmaking and also works as a printer for Kumi Korf. In her own artwork, she uses different techniques and media to combine public and private memory and the passage of time. She has shown nationally and internationally, and her work has been collected in public and private collections in USA, Japan, Belgium and Germany.