Delivering Stories: work by Karen Koch and Amber McElreath

Karen Koch is a local artist who relies on her love of nature and memories of days gone by for inspiration for her art. Believing that being grounded in our past helps us grow toward our future, her recent work explores the universal questions of where we have been and where are we going. In her recent work she incorporates stitching as a way to add line detail. Thread, yarn, and stitching are also a nod to both her evenings spent embroidering with her mother and days as a seamstress in collage. Found objects, grandmother’s buttons, plastic wrappers, maps, and old book pages all find their way into her work. Maps especially are loaded with associations of childhood road trips and the promise of grand adventures. The results are colorful artworks rich in surface texture and personal associations.
Amber McElreath graduated with her BFA from Kent State University School of Fine and Professional Arts with a concentration in painting. She worked by commission before obtaining her MAs in Art Therapy and Counseling from Ursuline College. In her work she finds objects, collects them, and “purges” them by incorporating them into new pieces.