Established by the WSU School of Art, Design and Creative Industries, the ShockPress Collaborative is a visiting artists program. In November, ShockPress hosted Ashley Nason, who shared her printmaking know-how with WSU art students during demonstrations and artist talks on campus.
Nason focused on her series Traversing Imaginary Landscapes, through which she imaginatively explores the effects of pollution and the misuse of natural resources on the environment, as in Smoke Signals, above, and Tracking Signals, below.
The purpose behind ShockPress, explains Humberto Saenz, WSU assistant professor of print media who organizes and invites artists for the collaborative, is to “enable students to gain practical professional experience in printmaking. Its goal is to foster a community of students that will attain career experience through engagements with national and international artists.”
Lindsey DeVries, the school’s external affairs coordinator, adds, “We’re thrilled to have high-caliber printmakers, such as Ashley Nason, working with our students.”
ShockPress Artist Ashley Nason was born in New Orleans, Nason received a BA in psychology and a BFA in painting and printmaking at West Virginia University, Morgantown. She earned an MFA in printmaking from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 1999, and is currently a printmaking instructor at Metro State University in Denver, Colo.
