Anne Burton
Anne Burton
Anne Burton was born in Washington DC in 1982 and grew up in Virginia Beach, VA. She holds a BA in studio art from the University of Richmond and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Anne has held residencies at Vermont Studio Center, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Lux Center for the Arts, and the Cable Factory in Helsinki, Finland. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the International Quilt Museum, The Museum of Nebraska Art, the Pacific States North American Print Biennial, The Boston Printmakers North American Biennial, the Duoro Print Biennial in Portugal, the Cieszyn Print Biennial in Poland, and the Awagami Miniature Print Exhibition in Japan. Her work is in private collections as well as the collection of the Duoro Museum in Peso da Régua, Portugal and Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha, NE. Anne is the ARTS program coordinator at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, NE. She resides in Lincoln with her husband and two sons. Anne gravitates to traditional print media such as woodcut because of their historical associations with communication, social engagement, and reiteration, which are consistent themes in her artwork.
I gravitate to print because of its historical associations with communication, social engagement, and reiteration. My most recent bodies of work, "Inhaling the Spore" and "Night Writing", both use print media as a means of connecting the work to the authority of the printed mark and historical modes of disseminating information. Printmaking has had a profound impact on human communication, and I regard it as an effective and potent medium for discussing the issues of technology and human connection that concern us today.
The current body of work I am developing is titled Inhaling the Spore. The title comes from my personal experience with my youngest son, who became sick and developed a tumor on his lymph node after inhaling a spore of rare mycobacteria at the age of two. I made my son a quilt to wear during his surgery and hospital stay. The process of creating the quilt was carried through this work as a metaphor, both for his altered and sewn body, as well as for the fragmented nature of our understanding of the way that we relate to our environment.
The exhibition and installation Night Writing include references to methods of coded communication, from the spy code Night Writing to the Victorian practice of sending symbolic flower bouquets, also called floriography. Both of these historical systems of delivering meaning through symbolism often failed to convey messages clearly, and that also makes them an apt representation for how communication breaks down in our contemporary world. By integrating modern modes of creation such as the laser cutter into this body of work, I was able to expand my own definition of print and investigate new methods of multiplicity, communication and connection. The installation Night Writing reads, in code, “left or right we can all see wrong”.
