CPC Small Print Show: Karinna Gomez

This blog is part of a series of interviews of participating artists / printmakers in the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative Small Print Show.

Born and raised in California, Karinna Gomez is currently working towards earning a BA in Art Theory and Practice and Psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. In addition to her classes, she works as a curatorial and conservation aide at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston. Exposed to printmaking at an early age, she combines etchings and ballpoint pen drawings. She makes line etchings and then veils aquatint over her drawings, and often burnishes away areas of the aquatint. She reveals that the way she creates her etchings is similar to her approach to creating her own imagery -- both are invested in the hidden things of darkness.

Karinna Gomez. Nest Field. 2008.
Etching and aquatint, 4" x 3".

Karinna Gomez. Sleepy Grizzly. 2008.
Etching and aquatint, 9" x 8".

"My mother is also a printmaker (and sculptor), and I grew up around her etchings. I think that not only did her work instill a love for etchings but also and a need to learn to make them myself. Her imagery is slightly magical, and this I believe has also influenced the way that I make images. Beyond this foundational influence, my imagery comes as a stream of consciousness in my drawings, which I create in book form. I then make my etchings directly from my drawings, utilizing the nuances of etching to inform the imagery that began with a ballpoint pen.

"In my printmaking, I’m concerned with night and its imaginative and psychological depiction, and am compelled by the peculiar, fearful, and yet strangely comforting feelings generated by either being in or longing for dark environments. The drawings and etchings that I make show animals and sleepy humans in dark landscapes, and most recently, houses burrowed underground. Though their imagery is the same, my drawings and etchings communicate different qualities of darkness through their renderings. The dense and yet delicate crosshatching of the drawings appears soft, alluding to perception in the dark. In my etchings, I use aquatint to veil detailed line etching, blanketing the imagery with a kind of darkness. Together the drawings and etchings respond to human relationships with darkness through a recollection of imaginary occupancies within it."

Karinna Gomez. Looking for a Bed. 2008.
Etching and aquatint, 9" x 8".

Karinna Gomez. Buried House. 2008.
Etching and aquatint, 5" x 4".

Her exhibitions include: Night Vision: Printing Darkness, Colonel Eugene E. Myers Gallery, Grand Forks, ND, 2008, and Brown Wrapper's 2nd National Juried Portfolio Competition for Undergraduate Students; Annual Undergraduate Art Theory & Practice Art Show, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 2005, 2006, 2007; Ceremony of Tea, Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA, 2005; Barnes & Noble, solo exhibition, Stockton, CA, 2005.

Karinna has a profile on MySpaceArt.com and can be reached at email karinnaruthgomez@gmail.com.