Interview with Katie Bonadies, May 2024
Nori Jo is a printmaker who also works in fiber and textiles. They are working at the intersection of these media in a series of hand pressed relief prints from fabric objects. Nori Jo is the current RWS EMERGE Artist in Residence in print.
Nori Jo started printmaking as a student at Casco Bay High School. They recall an advanced art class in high school where they block-printed t-shirts and got to explore the medium. As an undergraduate, they went on to earn a degree in Printmaking and Restorative Justice at Bennington College. There they studied relief printing, etching, monotype, litho, and letterpress. They love the physicality of printmaking, especially carving; it makes sense to them in the creation of high and low points and what is revealed, “I really love the part of the process where you set everything up and ink and print and it becomes something totally different than you ever could have imagined. That feels magical to me.” Their senior thesis combined printmaking and textiles as an installation piece made from different prints on fabric that Nori constructed into a tent-like space in a quilt-like fashion that could be entered and viewed from the inside and out.
In their transition from student to practicing artist Nori Jo quickly realized they could not continue to produce prints like they had in school because they no longer had access to a studio with presses and materials and knowledgeable professors, “It’s hard to appreciate that while you’re there, so the transition is realizing that if I want to continue to do the same level of work I have to find studio space.” Without this kind of access, Nori Jo had been experimenting with rubbings and simplistic lino cuts that could be hand rubbed–both possible without a print shop–before joining the EMERGE program at RWS. The process led them to try things they wouldn’t have otherwise and they have discovered a few different avenues they want to explore.
The work they are currently making is very different from the work they made in school just a couple of years ago, and they feel really good about the direction in which they are headed. The themes Nori Jo is invested in have changed since graduation; they used to be very ‘maximalist’ in that they took advantage of everything available to them, “It is a lot, and that was possible when I was in school. I’ve taken a step back and simplified by almost taking color out completely and focusing more on exploring why I am making work.”
Nori Jo has been peeling back layers of abstraction and simplifying their process. They are currently taking pieces of fabric and inking them and making hand-rubbed prints from those pieces, which is an act of taking all of the intermediary steps out to focus on the fabric and the paper, “The texture is really beautiful and brings you closer to the object itself because you have removed those layers in between.” They feel more focused like they are getting at what really interests them. Despite the residency’s end date, Nori Jo feels like they have infinite time and space to take it slow and notice and be curious, instead of creating with a deadline like making an edition for an assignment, “If I make one print and I’m not interested in doing that, I can just stop.”
Their approach to their practice has shifted in other ways too. They used to oppose sitting down with a concept and would start with materials or colors and play around and see what happened. Now Nori Jo creates with an image or feeling in mind, and because they are more focused, they are better able to access the conceptual aspect of their work. Documentation is another interest they want to explore, which works well with their fabric to paper printmaking.
All of Nori’s creative work is tied to their politic, “Whether or not I like it, my work always ends up being or feeling political. That’s been coming through a lot more in my work recently.” In school they had felt it was forced and taking a step back has allowed the message to come through in a more genuine way. They are interested in making work that centers on community and interconnectedness and interdependence, which relates to the community organizing they do and, more personally, exploring gender and the politics of getting dressed. The aspects of their identity and queerness and their community and politics–as a leftist anarchist abolitionist–come through in their work because it is important to them. They envision creating a documentary project that investigates gender politics and textile and fashion.
Nori Jo has also been experimenting with shamanic journeying, an indigenous practice of self-reflection where you listen to drums and tune into your own mind and go on a journey and learn a lot about yourself, as a means to inform their art. They have a lino cut in their studio that is a text they wrote after one of those experiences. They are interested in the intersection of spirituality and organizing, and abolition and organizing as a spiritual practice. Investigating the idea of organizing is a process in which something that is yet to exist is possible, that there is a future where the oppressive structures we live under no longer exist and are replaced with community. “We can’t see it yet, but we have to act like it is inevitable. I am moved by what people have to say about how necessary imagination is in this work, in building something you cannot see.”
Nori’s work, the relief prints in particular, reveal what was not originally visible and printing has therefore become a faith-based practice for them; they apply the ink as a believer that something beautiful is about to be revealed.
Contact Nori Jo through Instagram @para_nori_a.
Comments