Cathie Bleck, an internationally respected artist is best known for her distinctive works in scratchboard and kaolin clay board. Her stylized forms are cut through inks and handmade pigments, revealing the white of the kaolin clay beneath. It is a process similar in concept to woodblock printing.
Artist statement : “When I was a girl I fell in love with darkness. The tools I work with-pen, ink, fine knives and clay-became natural choices for someone drawn to observe and record the world in close detail, and to best orchestrate the balance between opposing forces. Through the exploration of symbolic narrative imagery, carved into earth’s clay; I speak to relationships that are intrinsic, permeating through human experience. I rely on intense contrasts of tone and imagery. My focus is on the dualities of the interconnectedness of life; observing the equilibrium all species are challenged to establish in a world of constant change.”
Bleck’s work was featured in two American art museum solo exhibitions in 2008, The New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut and The Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio. Bleck’s artist monograph “Open Spaces” was released in 2006, launching her studio artwork into the gallery and museum world. Her work was selected from 600 female artists in the collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art entitled “Women Artists at New Britain” and among eighty works including Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dorothea Lange, Louise Nevelson, Lee Krasner, and Helen Frankenthaler, Sarah Miriam Peale —to the contemporary—Cindy Sherman, Ellen Carey, Irene Hardwicke Olivieri, Lisa Hoke, and Lalla Essaydi.
Cathie Bleck has been exhibited in over seventy exhibitions internationally and archived and displayed in the collections of The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Butler Institute of American Art, The New Britain Museum of American Art, The Library of Congress, Bonfoey Gallery in Cleveland, Yves LaRoche Gallery in Montreal and Enid Lawson Gallery in London. Her artwork has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, The New Republic and on U.S. Postage stamps, Sony Records, Warner Bros. and Motown Records as well as two U. S. State Department’s Earth Day images and World Ocean Day Images and classic covers for Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Harper, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” as well as “Dante’s Divine Comedy” and “Farewell To Arms” by Ernest Hemingway. Bleck has also lectured internationally, conducted workshops, written for art magazines and been featured in many art and design magazines, including an interview with Juxtapoz Art + Culture Magazine. Cathie Bleck resides in Cleveland, Ohio with her husband George Muschler.
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