Patricia Hunsinger

2010-2011

Patricia L. Hunsinger is a Central New York printmaker. She received her B.A. From the State University of New York at Cortland in Studio Art and went on to earn her M.F.A in Printmaking from Ohio University. She has taught at a variety of schools, including Long Island University at C.W. Post and Ithaca College, and most recently, Parsons New School for Design and Cazenovia College. As a teacher, Patricia devotes herself to the classroom in order to create a shared student-teacher experience, a “life world experience,” as writer David Abrams explains it. She works to build student technical knowledge, but also to incite a love of learning and creating. While she enjoys teaching students the techniques of creating art and helping them grow into accomplished artists, much of her life is entirely devoted to making prints. 


In creating her art, Patricia pulls from her plethora of experiences, from her family, and from the universal questions all humanity faces. She lives in the countryside near Ithaca, and her immersion in the natural world is a running motif in her artwork. She is often able to turn sketches, photographs, and found items from her backyard into layered prints that draw from nature while commenting on human life and the choices we make. Other major influences on her art include her children, Allison and Elliot. With her daughter, she was able to explore the cycles of nature in terms of budding womanhood; with her son, she was able to explore his increasing sexuality and the effects of the external world on his maturation. In both bodies of artwork, she chose to present the awkward transition of pre-adolescence and adolescence into adulthood, and this includes creating larger-than-life images that are meant as startling confrontations for the audience in order to invoke in them the same discomfort adolescents feel. Patricia strives to bridge the line between artist intention and audience observation. 



Patricia has been a part of many national and international portfolios and exhibitions, including her grant-funded trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia where she taught local woman how to make wood cuts and worked with local children in creating art as a form of therapy. Her work has been shown in galleries throughout the country, and she has been a part of several artist residencies, including the Jentel Artist Residency in Wyoming. While her focus is on printmaking, including reliefs, lithographs, and screen prints, she also loves 2-D design, photography, computer art and animation, and making books and paper.