Women United ART PRIZE 2023
Photography & Printmaking Category
1st place winner
ARTIST BIO
Doris Kapner is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in ceramics and printmaking. The daughter of German immigrants and raised in New York, she earned her B.F.A. in Sculpture from Purchase College in 1994 and has worked in art galleries, as a TIG welder, police officer, homemaker, loss prevention manager, visual merchandiser, yoga teacher, and art instructor. This fluctuation between typical male and female roles informs her work. Doris began working in ceramics in 2015, creating undergarments, dresses, and handkerchiefs, often adding needlework and crochet, influenced by her upbringing. She has been exploring printmaking since 2022 as a selected artist of the Studios at McColl Center program in Charlotte, North Carolina where she has her studio.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In 1812 the Brothers Grimm released their first edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen, now known as Fairytales, which was a collection of stories gathered in Germany that had often been spread orally. These stories were recorded in the way they were told and are quite different from the Disney versions known today. They are sexist, misogynistic and often horrific. While magic is frequently featured making the stories feel like make believe, many of the issues they contain are still true today.
Our society still struggles with violence, murder, oppression, poverty, abuse and they still happen within families as they do in the Grimm’s stories. Pulling elements from the story and creating sculptures that feel both haunting and storybook like, the work in this exhibit explores the fantasy, absurdity, and social issues contained in the stories through sculpture and printmaking. Life is beautiful and ugly, hopeful and tragic, full of wonder and fear. You are invited to step into the fairytales and reassess what your assumptions are. Is it really a magical place or a nightmare? Has our society evolved or do we just pretend that it has?
Charlotte, NC / United States