Today we’d like to introduce you to Deanna K
rueger.
Deanna, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I was born and raised five blocks from the sandy shore of Lake Huron in Harbor Beach, MI, a very small town 120 miles north of Detroit. After high school I moved away and started working full time in retail sales and then management in the Detroit area. At one time I managed a staff of thirty-five in a high-volume clothing store. I really enjoyed putting together displays and visual merchandising, but retail hours on salary can be horrific! After a year as a store manager, I quit and moved to Ann Arbor, living off bonus money and making costume jewelry I sold to area boutiques. By the fall of 1991, I realized it was time to go back to school, and to work! I took a full-time sales job at an upscale department store with flexible hours to work around classes.
Taking one or two classes a semester, the BFA I eventually completed at University of Michigan, Summa Cum Laude, with a dual concentration in Fibers and Drawing and Painting, took almost eleven years to earn! Taking the long route was certainly more expensive, but I ultimately got way more out each class and was able to devote 100% of my creative energy to each one. In 1999, while still an undergrad, I started teaching at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor.
All my mentors encouraged me to look into grad schools in CA, NY, or Chicago, but by the time I got my BFA in 2002, I had almost three years of college level teaching experience and did not want to leave. I also worked part-time as an exhibit preparator at the Gifts of Art Program at University of Michigan Health System. That provided an outstanding insight into how (and how not) to present work as a professional artist!
I received my MFA in 2004 at nearby Eastern Michigan University, which had an excellent Art in Italy study abroad program. I moved to Chicago in 2006 and have been an instructor teaching art and design at Northeastern Illinois University since then.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I work abstractly at the juncture where sculpture and painting intersect. The resulting pieces are hybrids. The process for my Shards series begins with recycled medical diagnostic film (X-Ray and MRI film) layered with acrylic monotype prints. The film is then torn apart, and the shards are reconnected into new configurations using thousands of staples. The visual aesthetic is at once high-tech and primordial. As our information storage evolves, the materials are becoming artifacts of an earlier age. Medical images and paper documents are increasingly being recorded solely in the digital realm.
Striving for the elusive and the intangible, my work explores the boundaries between reality and that which is not yet known. It evokes a multitude of associations: aquatic life forms, otherworldly geological formations, surreal vegetation, scientific images of the minuscule, visions of the cosmos. I am interested in humanity’s collective search for meaning in the absurdity that is this life, and in the pleasure to be found in the various manifestations of that search.
I am mostly known for Shards, but I have recently started a new series, Color, in which I am photographing wet paint on my palette in the process of producing Shards. I have always been interested in using recycled materials, and in liberating paint from the canvas.
How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
It gives me a good feeling knowing that people are seeing my work in person or online, and perhaps it is sparking curiosity, or admiration, or making them think differently. Medical scans are usually taken at a time of anxiety or pain, when something is wrong. If I can transform something with negative associations in a person’s history into a thing of beauty, I feel I have done my job.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I just got back from a phenomenal month-long artist residency at The Studios of Key West.
I have one piece hanging in Mango Madness, the members’ group exhibition there.
The Studios of Key West
533 Eaton Street, Key West, FL 33040
305-296-0458
Gallery and Box Office Hours: Tues-Sat, 10am-4pm
On view June 7 – July 19, 2018
This fall my work will be included in an upcoming group exhibition curated by Jason Messenger:
Artists’ Atlas: Mapping Their Journey
State Street Gallery,
401 S State Street, Chicago
Mon-Thu, 10am-6pm
Sept 24 – Dec 20, 2018, Reception TBA.
My work is in the following permanent collections:
Fort Wayne Museum of Art, IN
Reyes Holdings, Rosemont, IL
In the lobby of Woodview Luxury Apartments in Deerfield, IL
Rackham Graduate School – University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Bank of Ann Arbor
CEO’s office of Blinder man Construction, Chicago, IL
Support could come by way of recommendations to others or purchasing my work.
Contact Info:
- Address: My studio is a separate 240 sq foot room, located within my Lakeview apartment at Clark and Belmont. Studio visits available upon request.
- Website: deannakrueger.com
- Email: info@deannakrueger.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deanna_krueger/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deannakrueger
Image Credit:
Deanna Krueger
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