Karen Snouffer: Seeking Joy

Karen Snouffer’s work is driven by her overriding fascination with abstract imagery. Regardless of medium, her work is filled with energy, animation and intensely bold colors. It explores contradictory themes, chaos theory and the intersection of 2D and 3D visual art with forces of nature and other art forms such as dance. Of her work, Snouffer states, “I have recently become acutely aware that in the act of making art I am seeking joy. When I am engaged in serious play, which is how I define my process, I fully trust that my unique visual vocabulary will surface. I play with what I have made by accepting, rejecting, destroying, and recreating over and over, all with a sense of intense curiosity. I find creative satisfaction in presenting opposing messages and inviting the viewer to discern the meaning of the work.”

Karen Snouffer received her BS in Education and MFA from The Ohio State University. She is a Professor Emerita at Kenyon College where she taught painting, drawing, and multi-media classes. She maintains a studio and residence in Gambier, Ohio. Snouffer has exhibited nationally at Art Center South Florida, Miami; The Work Space, New York; Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art; Hallwalls, Buffalo; Weston Art Gallery, Cincinnati; Evansville Art Museum, Evansville, IN; Poor Dog Space, Los Angeles; Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis; and internationally at La Médiathèque, Epernay, France; and Gallerie Cardo, Reims, France. She is a former fellow of the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, and a past Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito. Snouffer is a recipient of six fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council; a Great Lakes College Association New Directions Initiative; numerous Kenyon College faculty development grants; and a McGregor Foundation Global Exchange Grant, supporting travel to France for a project based on rural culture. In addition to her individual work, she has collaborated with poets, dancers, sculptors and new media artists. Her work has been published in three books: The Next Hedgerow; Love Life; Love Life: Memory and Nature at Play; and Somatic Principles and Dance. She is represented by Hammond Harkins Galleries in Columbus’s Short North Arts District.

Established in 1923, The Ohio State University Faculty Club is located at 181 South Oval Drive on the Columbus campus of the university. The art exhibition program features the work of selected Ohio State University faculty, staff, students and alumni. Exhibitions are held throughout the year. All exhibitions are free and open to the public.