Joanna Anos
Joanna Anos
At fifty, I turned from poetry writing to printmaking.
I earned a BA from Northwestern University in 1985 and subsequently taught undergraduate poetry writing courses as a part-time lecturer. Since 1992, I have been adjunct faculty in the Liberal Arts department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I earned an MFA in Writing in 2001. For many years, I administered the School's academic enrichment program, served as a faculty counselor in the admissions office, and taught foundational and other courses; currently, I teach first year writing seminars in the BFA program.
I live in Chicago, IL and am a member of the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative.
My work as a visual artist intersects with my work as a writer. I am interested in the potential of elements that repeat and vary like measures in a poem. In lines and pattern, texture and text.
In my intaglio and relief prints, it is the marks created by the presence of ink or, just as often, by its absence that accumulate. Shapes repeat, cluster, align. The potential of repeating elements extends also to the matrices and prints themselves. Through layering, with variation on orientation, surface design attains dimension. Through doubling, one print above and the same below in mirror image, shapes shift into new forms.
