Biography
Melissa Schulenberg is an American artist and printmaker who serves as the Charles A. Dana Professor of Art and Art History at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where she has built a mokuhanga teaching program and introduced generations of students to Japanese woodblock printing. A member of the Mokuhanga Sisters collective, Schulenberg has been instrumental in expanding the practice of mokuhanga within American higher education.
Schulenberg holds a BA from Bowdoin College in Maine, an MA in Printmaking from Purdue University in Indiana, and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her printmaking education provided a broad foundation in Western techniques before she turned to mokuhanga, which has become the central focus of her research and studio practice.
Her engagement with mokuhanga deepened through residencies at the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory (MI-LAB) in Fujikawaguchiko, Japan, where she studied the technique alongside the artists who would form the Mokuhanga Sisters and immersed herself in the materials, tools, and philosophy of water-based woodblock printing. These residencies shaped both her artistic practice and her teaching, leading her to develop mokuhanga courses at St. Lawrence University alongside her existing offerings in drawing, relief printmaking, intaglio, and book arts.
Schulenberg's teaching has had a notable multiplying effect on the mokuhanga community. Her student Brendan Reilly, who enrolled in her mokuhanga course with no prior experience in art, discovered a deep affinity for the medium -- the kind of intergenerational transmission, from MI-LAB to American university to student artist, through which mokuhanga continues to grow and diversify.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably in Australia, Ireland, Japan, and New Zealand. As a member of the Mokuhanga Sisters, she has presented a paper on educational mokuhanga practice at the International Mokuhanga Conference held in Nara in 2021. She lives and works in Canton, New York.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇺🇸United States
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 2
Frequently Asked Questions
Melissa Schulenberg is an American artist and printmaker who serves as the Charles A. Dana Professor of Art and Art History at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where she has built a mokuhanga teaching program and introduced generations of students to Japanese woodblock printing. A member of the Mokuhanga Sisters collective, Schulenberg has been instrumental in expanding the practice of mokuhanga within American higher education.
Melissa Schulenberg's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Melissa Schulenberg's prints frequently feature abstract, trees, washi.
