OPENING RECEPTION Friday 24 JUNE 2016, 5 - 8 pm

Mary Claire Becker is a printmaker living and working in Asheville, North Carolina. She obtained her BFA from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 2012. Since then, she has spent time at Asheville BookWorks and Penland School of Crafts and has served in the UNCA print shop as a volunteer shop tech. She will be attending the University of Iowa as an MFA candidate in printmaking this fall.

Mary Claire's work merges decorative ornamentation with scientific illustration, blurring lines between abstraction and representation to communicate both immaterial and material truths. Lithography and intaglio allow for fine detail in illustrations, and silkscreen and relief create blocks of pattern that are overlapped to embellish the subject matter. She sees each impression as a building block for larger compositional structures and uses printmaking as an element in relief sculptures, artist books, and stop-motion animations.