If you get tired, pull over

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Sophie Isaak

My work is bound to intense colors, awkward and surprising forms, and idiosyncratic compositions. I utilize printmaking techniques, as well as drawing and painting, to convey spaces that are simultaneously intriguing and frightening. Explorations into the grand forces that propel the world, good and evil and drama arose from my early love of John Steinbeck and the Old Testament. My fascination with the melodrama of narrative led to pop culture obsessions with Law and Order and the Real Housewives franchises. Instead of expressing these interests through traditional narrative structure, I create wildly shifting plots through intense and often very wrong-feeling color choices. Interest in mood, emotion and chaos arose from my attempts to understand the completely paradoxical nature of the world. I harness forces of good and evil, beauty and repulsiveness, happiness and sadness, attraction and repulsion, to convey scenes as tumultuous as both the world around me and my own shifting moods. By pushing two opposite elements next to each other I hope to reveal how disparate energies cohabit the same plane. These disruptions are meant to take the work to an unpredictable conclusion while confounding the viewer. 

I seek to build compositions from oppositional patterns, forms and various print and drawing mediums. My most recent work sprung from feeling removed from the world during the pandemic, job transitions, and moving states. I was inspired by an interview with painter Joanne Greenbaum wherein she discusses the personal and free space of her studio. Greenbaum explains how she works without limits and allows herself to make work that may feel “embarrassing” at first. This phrase has stuck with me and allowed me to make visual moves that may initially feel wrong or ill-intentioned. Isolation emboldened me to create work purely for the pleasure derived from making. These personal and contradictory works are driven by a compulsive need to decorate. The rigor of creation and laborious repetition serve both as tools of survival and relaxation. I think of each drawing or print as being completely made up of decoration, but somehow the interactions between these moments of visual seduction create a larger and more complex story. Every piece is a moment in time illuminating interactions that exist in the unpredictable and illogical world of the paper. These works luxuriate in escapism and the freedom of imagining alternate realities. 

Bio 

Sophie Isaak is currently an Assistant Professor of Printmaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Lincoln, NE. After graduating from the University of Vermont with a degree in English and Studio Art, Isaak went on to receive an MA and MFA in printmaking, with a secondary concentration in painting, from the University of Iowa. Her work has been displayed nationally in several solo and juried exhibitions. Most recently Isaak has exhibited at Art Gym in Denver, CO, The Washington Printmakers Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Janet Turner Print Museum in Chico, CA. Isaak is a member of the Mid America Print Council and Southern Graphics Council International. She served as the President of the Executive Board of the Mid America Print Council from 2022-2024. Isaak has completed artist residencies at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, MA and the Doel Reed Center in Taos, NM. Previously, she has taught printmaking at Skidmore College, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lesley University and Oberlin College.