Bio

Craig Mains is director and exhibit and publication designer for The Ink Shop Printmaking Center. He received a BFA in photography from Cleveland Institute of Art and studied printmaking while working for the main research library at Cornell University.

Statement

I’m usually making images of things that have gone awry typically by natural causes or human miscalculation. Large man-made objects and proscribed spaces appear to me as attractors of natural malaise: bridges beckon rivers to swell and wash out, trailer parks are tornado magnets, golf courses want to be struck by lightning and off shore oil platforms are asking for a storm surge.

Recent prints include a series of U-assemble prints, one diorama and several zoetrope monotypes. The zoetrope is an early cinematic device, a cylinder with sequential images positioned between slots. When the cylinder is spun, an animation is revealed. These prints are laser-cut so one could pop the images out and insert their tabs into matching slots to create a 3D print. Each of the images are based on a mishap involving a circular spin like that of a zoetrope.