Fiction: A Figurative Abstraction Exhibit of Clay Monoprints
“Fiction” Exhibit Opens January 2nd, 2026
This Friday, January 2nd, I’ll have an exhibit opening featuring clay monoprint works — a medium developed in Pennsylvania. The collection of works focuses on art that can be considered figurative abstraction: recognizable, real-world forms portrayed in abstract ways. See the works and other exhibits on First Friday from 5:00 to 7:00 PM.
"Fiction"
Clay Monoprint Exhibit
Adams County Arts Council
125 S. Washington Street, Gettysburg, PA
January 2026
First Friday Reception:
Friday, January 2nd, 2026
5:00 - 7:00 PM
Exhibit Artist Statement:
Artist Statement for Fiction
(Adams County Arts Council, January 2026)
In Fiction, I present a body of work that dwells in the space between representation and abstraction. Each piece emerges from the clay monoprint process—a method that combines the painter’s intent with the medium’s nature. Working on a slab of clay known as the matrix, I layer pigments and brushstrokes while allowing remnants of previous works to shape its evolving history. The results are neither purely imagined nor purely seen; they are translations of process and imagination into visual form.
The clay monoprint art form is relatively new, and many works are experiments that resist easy classification within traditional styles or movements. For this exhibit, I use the phrase “material-oriented figurative abstraction” because it captures that tension: forms may suggest vessels, landscapes, or other familiar objects, yet they never resolve into literal images. Instead, they become echoes of both past and present. The clay, pigment, and chance determine as much of the outcome as my own intent. The way the clay transfers to the material (often Pellon) becomes part of the work’s meaning, influencing future prints. Process and material are inseparable from the final image.
The matrix itself is a record: each layer of clay slips and pigment, embedded into the clay slab, is captured in time. I do not erase those echoes; I lean into them. Layers accumulate, and remnants of earlier imagery reappear unexpectedly, as though the clay recalls its past and chooses to speak. In this way, the material is both subject and medium, holding within it the memory of this transformation.
The title “Fiction” suggests that what you are seeing is not a direct representation of something tangible—it is a narrative shaped by memory, of what remains after the artist and chance collide. Even when a work seems to reference something familiar, it is always a story built from clay, artist marks, and the intent of the matrix itself.
This collection at the Adams County Arts Council encompasses not only the works on display but also the histories that shaped them. Ultimately, these monoprints are tactile and limited by the present. Peer closely at the surface and recognize that fiction—like art itself—is past and present transformed.