Carey Watters

Sharp Points

February 11, 2023 - April 8, 2023
Opening reception February 11, 2023, 1 - 3 pm

Sharp Points, an exhibition of paper-based works by UW-Parkside professor Carey Watters, opens at OS Projects on February 11, 2023 and continues through April 8, 2023. The gallery will have a reception for the artist on Saturday, February 11, from 1 – 3 pm.

Carey Watters’ artwork is highly personal and mythical in nature, weaving together feminist concepts, historic map making and religious and pagan symbolism. The forgotten saints and anonymous korai that populate her work serve as metaphors for the artist’s experiences as a woman. Watters reanimates their broken postures and enigmatic faces, reinventing the characters as powerful heroines engaged in epic struggles.

The artwork is the culmination of a multifaceted practice grounded in Watters’ career as an environmental graphic designer, which has given her experience working with a range of materials and craft techniques. All her projects require extensive research and many hours of cutting, gluing and pinning before they are assembled. Watters also fabricates nearly all her own materials and employs printmaking techniques to create textures, layers and repetitive patterns that lend depth and complexity to the work. 

The marbled paper Watters creates is specific to traditional Italian marbling patterns, and the gold elements in her works employ traditional underpainting and gold-leaf gilding. Watters combines these traditional techniques with digital fabrication tools to increase efficiency and position her practice in a contemporary context. The work that results is labor intensive, process driven and committed to rigorous craftsmanship.

About the Artist

Carey Watters is an associate professor of graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. She holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in printmaking and book arts. Watters has been working as a professional graphic designer since receiving her BFA in graphic design from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1999. She has exhibited her work regionally, nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibits include Fragmented Virtues at the Trout Museum of Art (Appleton, WI), Tiny Cuts at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (West Bend, WI) and Excavation: Current Work at UW-Parkside’s Foundation Gallery. Watters’ work is influenced by her travels to Calabria, Basilicata, Puglia, and Sicily, Italy and her research of Byzantine architecture, design, and religious reliquaries.