Josh Winkler
Josh Winkler
Josh Winkler is a Minnesota artist working primarily with traditional and contemporary print media with main a focus on relief processes. Since receiving his MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2010, he has worked for a non-profit printmaking center, taught printmaking, and consistently exhibited work nationally / internationally. Winkler is currently an Associate Professor of Printmaking at Minnesota State University.
Winkler’s work is in public collections including Yale University, Hennepin County Public Library, The Yukon Archives in Whitehorse YT, and The Quebec National Archives in Montreal. In 2018-2019, Winkler exhibited in British Columbia, Spain, Nova Scotia, and throughout the United States. He completed a two-week artist residency on the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska, and a six-week residency at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Winkler is currently completing his second Artist Initiative Grant from the MN State Arts Board, and was recently selected for an artist residency at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of Natural History.
As an artist, Winkler focuses on environmental issues connected to history and place. By combining personal experience with historic investigation, he builds landscape narratives that ask viewers to engage the social, political and environmental contexts of their surroundings. Direct experience and research feed the content and deep connections that are important to the artist. “The environmental and cultural tragedies of the past provide an emotive way to engage the high stakes of the present. As we seek new sources of energy and make decisions about land use, it is critical that we have tangible connections to the land and understand what has already been lost.”