Courtney Carroll – Featured Artist No. 1

COURTNEY CARROLL studied painting and printmaking at the Maine College of Art in Portland, ME. She received her B.A. in Art in 2008 from the University of Hawaii, Hilo and is currently finishing her Master’s in Social Work at IU South Bend.

Courtney’s artwork is beautiful and at times haunting, the monotype exposures conveying a great sense of depth despite the medium’s ‘simplicity’. Him, Darwin, Us speaks wonderfully to its namesake, the imploding shapes and shadows coming out of his head a visual representation of his theory of evolution that, literally, changed the course of human history. The other monotype piece, W.W.W.D? What Would Whitman Do?, also conveys these complexities. The staggered yet almost orderly assemblage of lines convey a sense of accumulation. Each ‘tally’ could mark a piece of writing, another poem. That he is becoming lost in this flurry of marks speaks to the way art can consume their makers, or how the art can very much be a part of the maker.

The landscape pieces are beautiful, gripping, and politically charged. In these times, I think it is more important than ever for artists to speak through their artwork. Atomic is great because what it appears to capture is not the moment of the explosion, but perhaps minutes or hours afterwards. It gives the sense of a nuclear test in the desert, but also just the fact that the foreground is this wasteland of sand speaks very clearly to the total destructive force of these weapons. It serves as a warning of the consequences of their use. In viewing Melt, we first see the two small remnants of ice where they float by the now exposed rock. Yet what makes this piece brilliant is the realization that the scene of the two lonely icebergs is viewed by looking through a gaping hole in a melting iceberg that exists in the work’s foreground.

Courtney Carroll has exhibited her work at South Bend Museum of Art, MECA art gallery, and University of HI Hilo Campus Center Art Gallery. She hopes to bridge her creativity and clinical skills to start an art therapy practice for children and adults suffering from mental illness in Northern Indiana. She is based out of the South Bend, IN area and works as a program manager at Family & Children’s Center.