Abby Franzen-Sheehan (AFS) is an artist and designer with decades of experience in studio practice, graphic design, museums, and art publications. As a professional artist exploring the nexus of feminism, politics, and history, she has created paintings, prints, collages, and sculptures that examine the complexities of faith and reality as constructed by human experience. She is greatly influenced by poetry, philosophy, religious thought, and intuitive insights.
At Home with War, features Franzen-Sheehan’s silkscreen print and mixed-media collages. The works explore human proximity to difficult things – a near and far-relationship to violence in America and in the world. Franzen-Sheehan references domestic spaces which are erected to nurture life, while simultaneously distancing those within from the barbarity of ever-present warfare. The work examines the perpetual desire to be better than we find ourselves and the search for divine intervention into the human condition of perpetual strife.
Franzen-Sheehan’s collages are made from layers of silkscreen prints on paper, fabric, and other materials. The prints are made from computer-manipulated images appropriated from old engravings, maps, illustrations, and games. The source materials reference a wide range of subjects, including the medieval crusades, wars in Europe, the American Civil War, biblical stories, creatures from folklore and myths, and children’s songs and stories.
The exhibit runs October 12 - November 9, 2024
