About the Exhibition

In Analog or Digital, artist Carrie Vander Veen explores the intersection of technology, nature, and human connection in a rapidly changing world. Her layered gouache paintings celebrate the handmade and the sensual as a counterbalance to digital overwhelm, using natural imagery as both metaphor and source of solace. Blurring the boundaries between analog and digital, Vanderveen’s work invites reflection on what we value, how we connect, and how we might find meaning in the midst of constant change.

Artist Statement

I often say that I am an atheist with two religions: the natural world and love in all its manifestations. My art is about how we choose to live our brief lives, what we give power to and what gives us power, what we share with others and what we hold close – decisions made daily that form our experience of the world.

I am interested in human relationship to nature and the influence of technology in our lives. The speed of technological change has made it imperative that we examine how technology structures our lives. Are we living in the analog or digital world? Are these distinctions are blurring?

With the increasing access to information, we are hyper aware of the lives of others. Injustice, comparisons, judgment, conflict, empathy, connection, strength. We know more about each other than ever before, and yet we seem to be lonelier and more isolated than ever. I feel both grateful and overwhelmed by my knowledge of the world.

At the same time, labor is moving out of the workplace and increasingly online. AI is changing the way we live and work. We are less connected to the physical world and to each other. Each of us must find ways to deal with this rapidly changing world, to protect our mental health so that we can bring our best self to our community, our work, our relationships, and to ourselves.

What does happiness and contentment feel like in our present moment? What does a peaceful day look like? Can we regain a sense of wonder? Through my artwork, I have made a concerted effort to reconnect with the sensual. I started to look at nature closely, marveling at its structure, its color, its beauty, and its incredible resilience.
Have you been outside recently? Felt the wind? Been a little frightened of the dark? Do you know what the face of a bat looks like? Can time in nature soothe? Heal? What if we reconnected to the elemental? Swam naked? Cut the grass to smell that smell? Spat watermelon seeds (wait, do watermelons still have seeds)? Learned bird calls (there’s an awesome app for that)? Picnicked in the park just to watch people?

BREATHE…. Relish the moment, the world will return in full force in a minute.
My work embraces the analog as a counter-balance to the power of the digital.

With a nod to the mental, physical and communal benefits of labor, my detailed, layered gouache paintings ask us to value the handmade, the laborious, the incremental marks that make the whole. The incremental marks that life leaves on each of us.

My imagery uses nature as a metaphor for universal life experiences. Mating, territoriality, nurturing, solitude, community, extinction, beauty. And yet, there is the suggestion of the digital in the pixelated marks that layer, blur, conceal, and connect the imagery. How are we connected to each other? How do the analog and digital combine to create our experience of life?

I look to the natural world for solace. The imaginary environments I create are dreamlike, combining both living and extinct species in a swirling vision of life in all of its beauty, its conflict, and ultimately, its interconnectedness. Life is ephemeral, happiness is transitory, suffering persists. I recently described myself as a grain of sand in a sandstorm; unexpectedly perhaps, I find some comfort in that image.

Carrie Vander Veen

Carrie Vander Veen received her BS in Architecture from the University of Michigan and her MFA in painting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the director and curator of the Finlandia Art Gallery, specializing in Finnish and Finnish American contemporary art.

Opening Reception

Friday, May 2th 6-8 pm

Artist Talk: 6:30pm

Ann Arbor Art Center
117 W. Liberty St., Ann Arbor

Join us for the opening reception of Carrie Vander Veen’s show in the Spotlight Gallery on the 2nd floor of the A2AC.

Free