Samira Gdisis
Racine, WI
Samira Gdisis is a printmaker and interdisciplinary artist from Racine, Wisconsin. She makes art to bring joy.
Message
As Samira Gdisis walks across her patio and stands before her studio door, you will see her pause. That pause is a moment when she wonders, sometimes aloud, “Who gets to do this?" Art is more than doing to Samira. It is essential; it is being; it is breath.
While Samira creates in many mediums, none speaks to her like printmaking. It is both passion and a bit of an obsession. After a trip to Cape Cod and Provincetown, Massachusetts, she researched and began to create white line color woodcuts. The media speaks to her. It is lighthearted and imperfect, playful and charming. The finished colorful prints make her smile.
Much of her studio practice is printmaking, linoleum cuts, monoprints, intaglios, and collagraphs. Her inquisitive and explorative nature is indisputably evident in all the other media she explores like painting, book arts, letterpress, encaustic wax, and the occasional ceramic adventure.
Samira holds a bachelor’s degrees in psychology, interdisciplinary art and printmaking. She also has earned a Master of Art in museum studies. Her work has been shown in local, regional and national exhibits.
If you spend a little time with Samira you find she does not just want to make art, she wants everyone to make art and for making art to bring them joy.
Samira Gdisis is a printmaker and interdisciplinary artist, community builder and curator from Racine, Wisconsin.
Statement
Art is my way of sharing what I notice and feel as I move through the world. My artwork often looks playful at first, but there’s almost always a deeper story, a message, or even a paradox. I hope my art brings wonder, emotion and a bit of magic to daily life of its viewers.
Printmaking is a passion. I use reductive techniques like white line color woodcut and linoleum cuts. White line color woodcut allows me to explore the contour of my imagery and gives me the immediacy of painting, allowing me to explore color and have a playful and lighthearted quality in my finished prints. Linoleum cut is the inverse as I print the contours in black ink. Sometimes I choose to stop there, and at other times I add color and texture to my prints with collage, special papers, or watercolor.
I’m inspired by people who live boldly and overcome challenges-especially women who break expectations and open doors for others, artists like Grace Albee. She raised five children while working as a fine artist, an exquisite wood engraver. She showed us, women artists, what is possible. I also admire the lives and careers of Lee Krasner and Audrey Flack, who each followed their own artistic paths, making the way for other artists.
My art is an outlet for me, a safe place when the world is chaotic, happiness when things seem bleak. It has given me a means to connect with others and explore the world I see outside my window and beyond. It brings me joy like little else.