Scripted: Carole P. Kunstadt

Union Arts Center presents Scripted: Carole P. Kunstadt, a solo exhibition featuring selections from Kunstadt’s Sacred Poem and Markings Series are a vehicle for the exploration of life’s vulnerabilities, an expression of gratitude and a platform for sanctity, contemplation and playfulness.

On display in Gallery One through September 30, 2018 Gallery Hours: Tues/Wed 1 – 4 pm, Thurs/Fri 4 – 7 pm, Sat/Sun. by appointment only.

I received a BFA, magna cum laude, from Hartford Art School, West Hartford, Connecticut, with a concentration in two-dimensional studies and continued with postgraduate studies at the Akademie der Bildenen Künste in Munich, Germany.

As a collagist, painter, book arts and fiber artist I often invoke a metaphysical quality of contemplation and timelessness. My works on/of paper reference the material of antique books, music manuscripts, ephemera and photo postcards – deconstructing paper, images and text, and using it in metaphorical ways. Through the exploration and manipulation of the antique materials, history, memory and time merge in a hybrid form. My devotion to books is inspired by the ability of the written word to take the reader to other places through stories, poems and prayers. My process reveals how language can become visual through re-interpretation.

I have been selected as one of eight yearly solo exhibitions at the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum by Gallery Owner Kenise Barnes scheduled for December 2018.

I am honored to be the recipient of the 2017 Kuniyoshi Fund Award selected by members of
The Kuniyoshi Fund Committee in cooperation with the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum Award Committee as well as the Medal of Honor & The Anna Walinska Memorial Award in 2017 by the National Association of Women Artists.

In celebration of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival’s 25th Anniversary in 2017, the Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT presented Boundless: Altered Book in Contemporary Art – I guest curated three unique approaches to transforming and exploring the malleability of the form, creating new structures and experiences of the codex. Works by Erin Walrath, Chris Perry and Carole P. Kunstadt were installed among the many rare first editions and early volumes in the Pope family’s historic personal library.

May – July 2018, ArtsWestchester’s Inaugural Triennial showcases my new series, PRESSING ON, having been recently previewed in Paper, Rock, Scissors at Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT.  My Sacred Poems were showcased in Books Undone: the art of altered books in contemporary art, Penn College, Williamsport, PA and in WORD 2016 at The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY. Numerous group exhibitions throughout the United States which have featured my work are notably, Slash: Paper Under the Knife, Museum of Arts & Design, New York, NY; The Divine and Sublime, Drawing Rooms, Jersey City, NJ; PATTERNS, Wired Gallery, High Falls, NY; Reader’s Art: Concealed, Confined and Collected, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, MN; Materials: Hard & Soft, Denton, TX; Abstract Evocative and Far & Wide, Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, Woodstock, NY; The Book: A Contemporary View, Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE;  NEW YORK REGIONAL, Magnitude SEVEN and Textuality, Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center, Cincinnati, OH; The Book As Art, Decatur Arts Alliance, Decatur, GA; and in Canada, The Art of the Book 2013, Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, Calgary, Alberta.

The Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art, Scranton, PA showcased a selection of my Sacred Poems in Between The Covers: Altered Books in Contemporary Art. The Museum of Biblical Art, New York, NY featured my complete Old Testament Seriesin the exhibition As Subject and Object: Contemporary Book Artists Explore Sacred Hebrew Texts. Representative works from the Old Testament Series were featured in And The Word Is…. in the Gershman Gallery at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA and were included in Somewhere Between Creation and Destruction, Joseloff Gallery, Hartford Art School. Concurrent in Hartford, CT, in partnership, the Clare Gallery and the Charter Oak Cultural Center presented Between The Lines: Works by Carole P. Kunstadt – two consecutive solo exhibitions from September through December 2014, providing a survey of past and current work.

The PBS/OFF BOOK Book Arts mini-documentary in the series on progressive arts, features Kunstadt in the segment, Transforming the Sacred. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC4fLk-XeeI

Public Collections include George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, ME; The Book Arts Collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; The Permanent Collection of the Center for Book Arts, New York, NY; Montclair State University Collection, Montclair, NJ; Curt Teich Postcard Archives, Lake County Discovery Museum, Wauconda, IL.