WATERSHED
JUNE 7 - 28, 2024 | MAIN GALLERY
TARYN MCMAHON
Taryn McMahon grew up in New Jersey and received her BFA from the Pennsylvania State University. She then attended the University of Iowa, where she received an MA and MFA in Printmaking. She briefly lived in Lawrence, KS, and served as the printmaking artist-in-residence at the Lawrence Arts Center. McMahon has received numerous awards for her work including an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Arts Challenge, and Puffin Foundation grant. Her work has been shown at The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA, the International Print Center, New York, NY, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY, and the McDonough Museum, Youngstown, OH, among many other venues. She currently serves as an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Kent State University. McMahon lives and works alongside her artist husband and two young children in Northeast Ohio.
Impressions (Cuyahoga River), 2022
by Taryn McMahon
Pigment print on canvas (installation)
156 x 120 x 24 inches
Artist Statement
Watershed explores the entanglements between the human and nonhuman through Northeast Ohio’s waterways. I present everyday landscapes, such as the Cuyahoga River and surrounding creeks, as compelling ecological sites that reveal the underlying fantasies and overlooked realities shaping how we interact with the natural world.
The monotypes and installations layer silhouettes of objects found on the banks of the Cuyahoga River and Breakneck Creek, both part of the Middle Cuyahoga Watershed. The highly layered monotypes are created from an index of silhouettes that are endlessly reprinted and recombined as a metaphor for an evolving and limitless ecology. Impressions (Cuyahoga River) and Impressions (Breakneck Creek) are printed canvas banners of enlarged cyanotypes made from direct exposures of the same found objects. Combining both naturally occurring and human-generated items creates printed environments that point to the current state of ecology as one in which the human and nonhuman have become conflated and intertwined in the face of unprecedented ecological change.