A printmaker by training, Conor McGrann has a particular interest in the translation errors and systemic breakdowns that occur when filtering work between digital and analog production methods. His work focuses on the relationship between geography, the built environment, and culture. McGrann holds an MFA from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and a BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University.
McGrann hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is the Digital Studio Arts Technician at Carleton, where he maintains the print shop and photography lab in Boliou Hall and facilitates the use of digital and analog tools and technologies for faculty, staff, and students. McGrann is one of three recipients to receive this year’s prestigious Jerome Foundation Fellowship through Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis.
The work in this exhibition dwells in climate and parental anxieties. I am new to the Midwest and its landscape is foreign to me. I commute to Northfield from Saint Paul, and spend that time in the car wrapping my head around this strange land that is both full of fresh water and drought prone. I cannot help but connect this irony to my feelings about parenthood. Bounty and scarcity, joy and fear, inevitable and unpredictable change. This is the seed that created this body of work. It was created in part with publicly available governmental geospatial data. Specifically, The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Minnesota Wetlands dataset and The Minnesota Geospatial Information Office Lidar Elevation dataset. This data was paid for by the public and therefore it is free for scientists, artists, and anyone else to use, at least for the time being.
-Conor McGrann
Learn more about Conor McGrann and his work.
Join us on October 2, 2025 for an artist talk with Conor McGrann to learn more about the artworks on view in this exhibition.
