Visiting Artists Flanders and Kolijn Demonstrate Science Printmaking at USCB
In a unique intersection of art and science, USCB recently hosted visiting Artists Eveline Kolijn and April Flanders in a printmaking residency inspired by earth's waterways and oceans.
Kolijn and Flanders were in Beaufort for exhibitions of their work at the Sea Islands Center Gallery, Beaufort Art Association Gallery and the Center for the Arts. While they were here, they demonstrated their work techniques and processes to USCB students and members of the larger community in sessions at USCB's printmaking studio on the Beaufort campus.
April Flanders
April Flanders is a studio artist, naturalist and professor of Studio Art at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Her current work explores the effects of invasive species in the eco-systems where they are introduced.
"While non-native organisms may provide novel interest and unique beauty, the natural controls that would normally keep them in check are missing. The result is an imbalance in the delicate equilibrium of our ecosystems," she said.
Because printmaking by nature is reproductive, Flanders' work highlights the multiplicity of invasive species. Using rollers and USCB's printmaking machine, Flanders combined drawing and papercutting techniques. Her patterns, repetition, and layered color "seduce the viewer, luring them into a menagerie of exotics," she wrote on her website, aprilflanders.com
Flanders' work has been featured in solo and group shows at museums and galleries nationally and internationally, including the Katzen Museum in Washington, D.C, the Center for the Book Arts, in New York, and the Global Print International, in Douro, Portugal. Her work is in many public collections, including the Asheville Museum of Science, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Tucson Museum of Art. She has a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University.
"It has been an honor, and great fun to share the print studio with the prolific Eveline Kolijn this week," she said.
Eveline Kolijn
Eveline Kolijn is a printmaker and installation artist living and working in Calgary, Canada. She grew up in the Caribbean, where she experienced both the beauty and demise of coral reefs.
Her recent work in her curated portfolio "Tidalectics" honors the historical tradition of graphically depicting the natural history of the ocean while telling a contemporary story of pressures on marine environments.
She believes that printmaking can be a bridge between scientific knowledge and human emotions, creating a pathway for many people into the realm of microbiology and environmental science while facilitating public discourse about climate change and other threats to our world.
While at USCB, Kolijn and Flanders visited Pritchards Island, the university's pristine research island.
"There is still beauty in this world," Kolijn posted on Instagram as a caption to her photo of the Pritchards Island beach strewn with driftwood.
Kolijn earned a MA in cultural anthropology from Leiden University in the Netherlands and a BFA from the Alberta College of Art+ Design. Kolijn has participated in national and international exhibitions, residencies, and public art projects, and has been published in scientific journals. She is an Ambassador of the Energy Futures Lab, a nonprofit organization powered by Generate Canada.
See Their Work Until March 28 at the CFA
As part of USCB's "Fin Fest" exhibition, works by Flanders and Kolijn are on display until March 28 at the USCB Center for the Arts, 805 Carteret Street, Beaufort, SC, 29902.
For more information contact: Joanna Angell, Director of the Sea Islands Center Gallery, at angelle@uscb.edu or Bonnie Hargrove, Director of the Center for the Arts at bhargrov@uscb.edu.
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CW • 2/10/2025