L. Michelle Geiger
Artist Statement

After studying both Marine Biology and Printmaking at the University of Washington, in Seattle, at the expense of sleep, one day I realized that while the career possibilities were about the same for both I had a distinct advantage in one. While it was helpful to have biology inform my art projects, it was decidedly unhelpful for art to inform my biology tests. While the Pacific Northwest marine life made excellent muses the artistic sensibilities made the dry research papers more creative than they should have been. I have been making up and embellishing scientific tidbits ever since. Recently I have been interested in birds, behavior, instincts, and physiology. In many of my pieces I have taken bits of research and paired them with my own writing in fake scientific documents along with diagrams and images supporting imagined research.

My interest in printmaking as a medium began because of its democratic nature, making multiples allows for creating prints that are not precious, I can test, experiment, manipulate, layer, explore, and if it is a disaster I can start over with the original matrix. The process is almost as appealing as the finished product.

In graduate school I transitioned from a series of prints or images to artist books. I wanted to dictate the pace and order that the images were viewed and one of my instructors suggested I sew them together. There is an inherent intimacy in book arts where the viewer becomes a part of the experience. They feel the texture of the book, smell it, take time going from beginning to end.

In the last few years I have discovered encaustic painting, a medium which uses beeswax and pigment, and felt even more connected with the process, the smell of the wax, translucent paper, and the textures created with a medium that hardens almost instantly.