Image via Museum of Wisconsin Art
Most artists bridle when their masterpieces are referred to as “craft,” while craftspeople shrug and smile when their work is called “art.” Carey Watters stands at the crossroads of both disciplines, embracing the art references while knowing that her technique draws equally from the school of craft.
Watters, an associate professor of art at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, specializes in cut-paper art and mixed-media collages, a blend rare among contemporary creators. “Carey Watters—Tiny Cuts” celebrates her work in a new exhibit opening June 26 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend.
The exhibit is part of MOWA’s 60th anniversary celebration, which highlights the work of women artists. Watters’ 23 individual pieces in the show draw their inspiration from women in history and mythology, making her inclusion in the celebration a natural, says Graeme Reid, the museum’s director of exhibitions. “I can’t think of anyone else who does collage work and does it as well, as detailed and as coherently as her,” Reid says. “The craftsmanship is incredible.”
Watters, who started as an art history major at UW-Madison specializing in Colonial- and Federal-style architecture, at first thought she would become an architect. Instead, she studied graphic design at UW-Milwaukee before returning to Madison to earn a graduate degree in graphics, specializing in printmaking, bookbinding and letterpress printing. While she teaches many of those disciplines at Parkside, the MOWA exhibit highlights only her cut-paper mixed media pieces.
Textures, Techniques
“I’m a materials person who works in the realm of environmental graphic design,” Watters says. “I am interested in textures, new materials and new techniques and trying to integrate them all in whatever piece I am working on at the time.”
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The exhibit includes several three-dimensional cut-paper self-portraits, several groupings of boxes gilded in gold leaf, and a series of small shrines called larariums to which she was introduced when she studied art in Italy and Turkey. She returns to those countries as often possible both to shepherd her students and seek additional inspiration, she says. But it’s the way she creates her art that draws most heavily on the crafts school and, in fact, stands apart in its methodology.
“Everything I do is very process-driven and I operate almost like an assembly line,” Watters explains. “I print multiple copies of images to stockpile, and my tiny cut pieces of paper tend to stack up over time. I’ve developed holding patterns, most often boards to which I pin these individual pieces, and only after I’ve done this will the narrative of a certain piece of art begin to reveal itself.
“I pretty much work all the time,” she adds, “but with everything there is an order in the process, and at the very end I get to assemble the different works.”
Women in mythology and history are common themes that emerge in Watters’ collages. She also includes a lot of gilded boxes in her art, a difficult and archaic process that she has worked hard at reviving. Reliquary boxes, which are portable containers often of religious relics, have a particular appeal to the artist.
“There are a lot of cut-paper artists, but I think I may be doing something different than you might find out there,” Watters says. “There are many layers to these pieces and I’d like viewers to dig deep and think about the facets that may relate to their own stories.”
Carey Watters—Tiny Cuts will be on display through October 17 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend. For details visit wisconsinart.org.
