Willow and Ware

“Willow and Ware,” a tribute to the magical workspaces, creative practices and legacies of the nationally recognized artist and educators Tom and Karen Meuninck will run February 3, 2023, through March 3, 2023, in Caestecker Gallery, C.J. Rodman Center for the Arts, at Ripon College. An opening reception will be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 3 in Rodman Center for the Arts.

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger believes making, learning and teaching are catalysts for connection that transcend language and facilitate deeper understandings of individuals, cultures and traditions. While traveling abroad, she has gained knowledge of traditional and ancient printmaking, book arts and paper craft techniques through shadowing master artisans.

In South Korea, Meuninck-Ganger continues to study Hanji (hand-made mulberry paper) and its applications. This incredible paper and its variations are often described to last more than 1,000 years. She is inspired by its strength and cultural significance in scholarly, artistic, utilitarian and conservation practices. She uses it to sketch, print, revisit, archive and pay tribute to the spirited life of mentors, masters and community leaders. She actively reimagines their workshops, tools and surroundings by reverently rendering, printing and reconstructing observations and memories, further transforming them into structural, architectural and often meandering visual arrangements that transcend place and time.

Meuninck-Ganger’s prints, artist’s books and large-scale hybrid media works have been exhibited in museums and both experimental and commercial galleries regionally, nationally and internationally. Her art is included in several private and public collections, including the Weisman Museum of Art, Saint Kate Arts Hotel Seed Collection, Northwestern Mutual and Target Corporation, and in contemporary publications such as Andrea Ferber’s Sustenance: Contemporary Printmaking Now, Richard Noyce’s Printmaking Beyond the Edge and Nathaniel Stern’s Interactive Art and Embodiment: The Implicit Body as Performance.

Meuninck-Ganger earned a Bachelor of Science degree in art education from Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in studio arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

She is currently the print and narrative forms area head and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.