AIRIE x McKnight Artist Fellow
Gaylord Schanilec
2023
Literature/Printmaking
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Gaylord Schanilec received a BS from the University of North Dakota in 1977. Noted for his color wood engravings, he established his own press, Midnight Paper Sales, in 1980. Since then he has published more than 25 books under his imprint, as well as accepted numerous commissions including works for The Gregynog Press in Wales and the Grolier Club of New York. He has been the recipient of numerous awards for his books including the Carl Hertzog Award for excellence in book design, and the Greynog Prize. He recently received a McKnight Fellowship in Printmaking. He is an Honorary Member of the Double Crown Club and an active member of the Ampersand Club and the Fine Press Book Association. His work is represented in most major book arts collections in the United States and in the United Kingdom, and the archive of his working materials is held at the University of Minnesota.
BIO
Supported by Artist Communities Alliance’s (ACA) McKnight Artist Residencies Consortium. This partnership between ACA and the McKnight Foundation supports selected residency program partners in developing fair and just policies and provides McKnight Artist Fellows with residency opportunities at these partner programs. This consortium aims to support the development of residency environments where any artist can thrive. Read more about the partnership here.
STATEMENT
“At the time of Henry David Thoreau’s death, he had been charting the natural cycles of his Concord territory for a number of years, leaving a rather massive project unfinished, with something like fourteen thousand unpublished pages of manuscript. I recently encountered one of the dedicated team of scholars endeavoring to edit and publish this material, opening for me a door into his world, and mine. My territory is 27 acres of rural Wisconsin where I have lived and worked for the past 35 years. I am interested in how my efforts and the efforts of those who have come before me have affected those 27 acres, with the relentless forces of nature constantly at work to counter our human exertions. Thoreau’s source of information was the printed word, and his means of expression was the written word, that is the writing of his own hand on paper. Today we find ourselves in another territory, one we carry in our pockets. I recently upgraded to iPhone 13 because of the embedded app that identifies plants, identifications that are often misleading. I am interested in the speed with which the distance between cyberspace and the natural world has grown, particularly following the recent shove of the pandemic. How a month in the Everglades might affect my thoughts I cannot say, but I look forward to finding out.”