Karri Dieken – Minneapolis, MN.
THE ARTIST
Dieken grew up in the badland’s region of the Midwest, inspired by the landscape, heritage, craft and
the hand-made. She earned an MFA from Washington State University in 2010, and a BSED in Art
from Black Hills State University in 2007. She has studied printmaking, sculpture, photography, and
ceramics throughout her education.
Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, New Zealand,
Germany, and the Netherlands. Her work has been included in exhibits at the Museum of Art WSU,
Boise Art Museum, Essex Art Center, Plains Art Museum, Dahl Fine Art Center, and the South Dakota
State Museum of Art. A selection of her prints has been acquired into the permanent collections at
the Museum of Art WSU, Boise Art Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and the Missoula Art
Museum. She continues to participate in select print exchanges and sculpture-based installations are
exploring narratives of nuclear family, midwestern heritage, and childhood in rural America.
THE WORK
As a mixed media artist, she is interested in fibers and polymers as mediums for documenting
perceived moments in time, considerations for collecting data, re-creating patterns, and engaging in
community-based performances.
Relying on the repetition of imagery found in relationship to the domesticity of commonplace and
nostalgia. With the use of various techniques within handmade art-making practices. Her work is
about making marks via material exploration. She works with both traditional fibers, to cast porcelain,
to found material sculpture. Resulting products range from cross stitched food, domestic interior
installations, prints and paintings about “home.” Dieken references outdated technological use of
communication with everyday objects and repeated patterns. Typewriters, telephones, sewing
machines, and bicycles become surrogate objects within each narrative space. Much of the work is
instigated by a collection of narratives informed by life experiences growing up in the Midwest to
current daily interactions. The labor-intensive repetitive work is an act of meditation, remembrance,
and homage to her Grandmother and Father.
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