Nebraska artist Karen Kunc, internationally-acclaimed printmaker, is this year's juror for our 39th Annual Visual Arts Exhibition. Known as a "printmaker's printmaker, she creates large, multi-colored woodcuts which depict abstracted landscape and seascape elements." She received her BFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1975 and MFA from Ohio State University in 1977. Since 1983, she has taught at the University of Nebraska-Linclon where she is a Cather Professor of Art.

Kunc's distinguished honors include many awards including a Fullbright Scholar Award and two Mid-America Arts Alliance/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. She recently won the 2007 prestigious Printmaker Emeritus Award from the Southern Graphics Council Award.

She curated the 2005 exhibition Mirror of the Wood: A Century of the Woodcut Print in Finland that toured the U.S. She has juried many exhibits, including the 29th Bradley National Print and Drawing Exhibition in 2003. A prolific artist, she has had many solo exhibitions including recent ones in Seattle; New York City; Edmonton, Canada; and Nagoya, Japan. Her prints have also hung in international group exhibitions in Japan, Thailand, Korea, Canada, Poland, Egypt, and the Czech Republic. Kunc's works are represented in fine collections all over the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

For more information about Kunc's pretigious artistic career see, for example, www.artline.com/galleries/haslem/kunc/bio.html.

Juror Statement

It is a pleasure for me to jury the VAST 39th Annual Visual Arts Exhibition. It is always an honor to have an opportunity to see new work by new (to me) artists from around the country, and to also review new work by artists with whose work I'm already acquainted. I am grateful to have such a following. Making tough choices is more difficult when starting with such a large group of entries - narrowing 688 down to 76. But this effort helps me to hone my outlook on a wide range of expression by so many across our vast country - a nice implication that certainly cannot be lost on the organizing agency of VAST!

Yet, I do want to say that my own tast and interest can be challenged and my eye can be continually refreshed as I become fully "in love" with so many of these works. Taken as a whole, this exhibition evokes a general darkly beautiful mood. We see works of poignant beauty, endangered nature, transforming reflective surfaces, strange material investigation and alterations, time-worn effects, the ebb of life's detritus as seemingly random accumulation, interpersonal miscommunications, and mysterious narratives that attempt to convey secrets. This panoply of ideas corresponds with my own interests in seeing artistic interpretations of topical themes about our world and life's complexities as endless individual expression... as it should be. Consider the themes about the passage of time, our necessary yet futile human efforts, and the absurd incongruities that are perhaps the wisest way to deal with life. These artists are so articulate for all of us with their visual, unspeakable, truths and metaphors. This exhibition invites the viewer to employ his or her own careful looking to recognize connections, aesthetic strengths, and deeply moving images.

I want to thank all the artists who allowed me to review their works, and I congratulate the exhibiting artists. The organizers at VAST have taken this daunting - and important - role to sponsor and promote artists through this great effort. I offer my special admiration for this effort to bring this countrywide representation of art to your community and to the larger national art scene.

Karen Kunc
Cather Professor of Art
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
April, 2007

Of the Sea
29" x 47"
etching and woodcut