Carrie Ann Plank

Carrie Ann Plank is an artist working in both the mediums of Printmaking and Painting. She exhibits locally, nationally, and internationally. Plank’s work is included in private and public collections including The Fine Art Archives of the Library of Congress and many major Universities' permanent collections. Currently her work may be seen at the Mokuhanga Conference as well as Yamazuki Gallery in Kyoto, Japan, The San Francisco Public Library, and the Joint Bio Energy Institute in Emeryville, CA. Upcoming projects include a survey of American Printmaking at the Liu Haisu National Art Museum in Shanghai, China, as well as a summer residency at the Venice Printmaking Studios in Venice, Italy, and a winter residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. Recent noteworthy shows include the National Museum of Fine Art in Taipei, Taiwan, Georgetown College, Georgetown, KY, Santa Rosa College, Santa Rosa, CA, and a residency at Monte Azul, Costa Rica. Additionally, Plank is the Associate Director: Printmaking MFA & BFA Programs at the Academy of Art University. She is active in the local arts community as a participant, juror, and volunteer, and is a board member of the California Society of Printmakers. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking from East Carolina University and her Masters of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the Pennsylvania State University.

Carrie Ann Plank describes this current body of work as a continuing series based on re-contextualizing information. In our current web-inflamed age she finds a level of over-saturation with the availability of information and images. Plank experiments with ways to reorganize and reinterpret found imagery. Her agenda is purely aesthetic. She finds an amazing beauty in charts, graphs, and other visual detritus that accumulates. Plank’s goal is for this informational detritus to take on a new role based on new juxtapositions and context.

Plank’s work revolves around researching web based information systems and pulling from these sources to find images that can be divorce from the original context and reassemble based on her own criteria- based on shape, form, complexity or other determiners. These sources are widely varied ranging from manuals, treatises, medical texts, records, and charts and diagrams of all descriptions.
The compositional elements are selected based not on the intended usage but purely on shape and design. This is then further removed from the original by utilizing simplification, re-drawing, cropping, and scale change. The prints usually began with an organic shape derived from her own sketches from life or photography. This key image is both the conceptual and aesthetic starting point. Plank typically begins by utilizing a black and white process as her base: Lithography, Etching, or Wood or Linocut. This composition becomes the jumping off point for multiple interacting translucent layers. Layers are usually created by Monotype or Silkscreen. Layers are all about subtle interactions and enhancing those new juxtapositions. As interaction is developed between initially discordant images, the new context is revealed.