Jennifer Printz is an artist whose practice explores the liminal space between the known and the unknown. Drawing on influences from physics and contemplative practices, her work engages time as both material and subject, embracing uncertainty as an embodied search for meaning. Through an intuitive yet rigorous process, she selects and merges materials for their inherent properties, creating poetic forms that invite sustained attention and reflection.
Printz’s work has been exhibited widely across the United States and internationally, including at Marshall University and Oolite Arts, as well as a large-scale installation at the Skolnick Surgical Tower at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach. She has also participated in residencies in the U.S. and abroad, including at the Merz Gallery in Scotland and at Stadt Salzburg in Austria. Recent and forthcoming projects include an exhibition at the Galerie Muzeum, University of Rzeszów, in Rzeszów, Poland; participation in the Untitled Art Fair (2025) with Dimensions Variable; a residency at the Rothko Museum in Daugavpils, Latvia (June 2026); and a presentation at The École de Paris Forum: International Solidarity through Artistic & Cultural Heritage (November 2026). Her work has been featured in publications such as Tricycle and The Carolina Review and is held in numerous institutional and private collections.
An active arts leader, Printz serves on the boards of SECAC, SGCI, and LAPS, and is a recipient of the NCAA Emerging Arts Administrators Fellowship. She is a dedicated educator with experience spanning museums and universities. Printz currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Visual Arts and MFA Director at Western Carolina University.
Statement
My practice is an embodied search for meaning and a poetic meditation on unanswerable questions. It is about working toward understanding in both a physical and a subtle spiritual manner. I combine disparate parts and different processes – the hand-made mark with a collaged photograph - to reflect on what it means to be alive. Cryptic symbols, suggestions of architectural forms, and patterns reflect infinite possibilities. Photographic elements reflect a specific moment in time. The unity of these elements presents the exchange of the personal with the universal.
Drawing is the heart of my practice; a stand-in for the desire to control and to leave a legacy. I relish making poetic statements with the ubiquitous pencil. My process gradually deposits graphite beside or atop collaged elements, leaving traces of my visceral energy in each work. Created through the deterioration of organic compounds, graphite speaks to rebirth and regeneration. Through sustained force and an intense passage of time, an alchemical process appears to occur as the darkest tones in my drawings hold light.
I return to printmaking for its physical presence, particularly the transfer of mark and tone through the dimensional alteration of paper. The labor of printing, which creates poetic images through dirty hands and an achy back, resonates with my blue-collar background. The historical relationship of the media to the dissemination of knowledge through maps, books, and other printed forms is a tradition I reflect upon in my printed works. Similarly, I have approached painting physically, by masking off areas and then rubbing pigment into the canvas with my hands before sealing it with acrylic medium. The final painting is approached like a collage. It is cut, and new elements are sewn in, allowing the painting to exist in its own elegantly anomalous space between two and three dimensions.