Trudy Wiesenberger

Small Pleasures I

Work Details

Small Pleasures I

2022

monoprint collage with chine collé

14 X 14 Framed

Inventory ID: #3582

About Trudy Wiesenberger

Printmaking is magical!
Collage is magical as well!
I feel most comfortable and gratified when I’m printmaking and creating collages.

My practice begins by either monoprinting plant material found on my walks, or by cutting stencils. Very often I chine collé (a French term meaning “to paste”) handmade paper, vintage Japanese dressmaker patterns or vintage pages of text to the printmaking paper before running the inked plate through the press. The chine collé insures me of additional color or text. Multiple runs through the printing press add texture, color, and unplanned complexity.

The 2023 exhibit contains both monoprints and monoprint collages. The collages are cut or torn monoprints combined with ephemera — maps, ticket stubs, old book pages, envelopes or envelope linings, etc.

The combinations and possibilities for pairings are infinite. The magic happens when disparate images are juxtaposed with other collected images. When the scraps connect and work, you just know it. The fragments speak to each other. The work is complete.
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Trudy Wiesenberger has been involved in the visual arts all her life: as an artist, advocate, patron, and collections curator.

She worked as an educator, beginning in 1970, in the Department of Education at the Cleveland Museum of Art. She has served on the boards of the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she founded the Craft Council; the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA); the Print Club of Cleveland and the Contemporary Art Society of the Cleveland Museum of Art; and Contemporary Forum, Phoenix Art Museum. In January 2020 she became a member of the board of trustees of the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

In 1988 she created the art collection at University Hospitals in Cleveland and served as founding curator until her retirement in 2011. She is the author of the book, Artwork From the Collection of University Hospitals. In 1998 the Cleveland Artist Foundation honored her for her contribution to the visual arts in Cleveland, and in 2010 she was awarded the coveted Cleveland Arts Prize. In 2017 the rotating art gallery at the main campus of University Hospitals was renamed the Trudy Wiesenberger Gallery.

She also serves as an independent curator.

Since her retirement from University Hospitals she has focused on her own artwork. She is a printmaker and collage artist and is represented by Gebert Contemporary in Scottsdale, Arizona and the Bonfoey Company in Cleveland, Ohio.