SAMANTHA SNYDER
Can you tell us a little more about your experience that have brought you to where you are today?
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Samantha: I didn’t start off in art. I was at BYU 20 years ago and I was a psychology major. After I graduated I got my teaching degree and taught elementary school for a few years. While I was doing that, I would draw these coloring pages for my students and they would get really excited. After I started having my kids, I decided that I really wanted to explore more in the art field. I had never had any technical training or anything, so I started taking classes at Utah State University. It was kind of just like a side thing for me to be able to have something to do that was my own thing. There more classes I took the more I enjoyed it. We moved around a lot between school and work for my husband. I had to leave USU, and long story short we ended up near Snow College where they have an associate in fine arts program (AFA), so I started taking classes there. My first class was a printmaking class and I fell in love with it. Anyways, I ended up getting my AFA there and am now in the MFA program at BYU. I feel like I came about this in a round about way just because we had moved around a lot and having all these different kinds of experiences, but I really feel like the timing was perfect because everything just kind of came together. The stars aligned for me to be here and it’s been really great.
What themes manifest themselves in your work?
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As a kid I loved reading scary stories. I liked delving into another side of things— not like super gory things, but alternate dimensions and other beings existing outside of our perceptions. So my work is exploring these alternative spaces, in a way that can apply to everyone. From time to time we can all feel like we are not really present, or just feeling detached to either the people around us or our environment. And that’s kind of what I am exploring— this feeling of isolation, feelings out of place. Not feeling really grounded. I think for me that stems from the fact that I have moved around so many times and not really feeling like apart of one place. I have where I’m from, but I haven’t been back there since I graduated high school. It’s definitely like a push and pull because I don’t necessarily want to be in one place for the next 30 years and I don’t think that’s really how life works out anymore, but it also is kind of sad because it complicates connections. It’s an interesting dilemma, that I feel like just keeps getting more complex he older you get.
Which medium do you enjoy working with the most?
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A: I would say printmaking, but maybe in a less traditional sense. I usually incorporate some form of printmaking combined with something else— maybe collage, or sculpture. There’s usually a lot of glue involved. It’s hard for me to want to do a traditional edition where everything is exactly the same. I try to do one of those every once in a while to just stay grounded in printmaking, but I am messy and I prefer to have a lot of different things happening. Recently, I have done a ton of screen-printing in my own work and I really enjoy that. But I also love intaglio and lithography. There’s just so much to printmaking techniques, and I feel like there is so much more for me to learn and explore.
What was it about printmaking that you were drawn to?
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A: I love the idea of process. I love using my hands and feeling that I am manipulating material physically, and printmaking is very physical in a different way than painting. It almost feels like printmaking is a trade, a different kind of skill set. I feel like I’m getting my hands dirty, working hard but the end result is so unpredictable. You can’t always predict 100% what is going to happen and there is this area that you just have to go with the flow. I am not a really precise person, and printmaking allows me to work with the unexpected and let that dictate where the piece goes next. When I start a new piece I really only have about 40% of it actually thought through, and the rest I let evolve with the process.
Do you have any shows you are working on or will be featured in coming up?
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We have a group traveling show getting ready to start and it’s going to Glendale, AZ and then it will go to Price, UT. Then it will be sent to Salt Lake City, UT. Each piece is a screen print, but based in our individual concepts so it’s been interesting to see how different everyone’s turned out. My two screen prints both have a background, but you can’t really tell where the image is actually taking place. The setting is really loose. There’s recognizable figures and human shapes in the foreground, but they’re just a little off. My hope is that the viewer feels that something is not quite right, and it creates this uncomfortableness. This ties in to the feeling of being not quite grounded, of working through being apart of something but also feeling lost and uncomfortable in it.
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instagram: @samanthasnyderart