Student Artist Spotlight: Arden Conine

Wednesday, Oct. 23, I was back in Tjaden for another interview with a student artist. Arden Conine ’26 is a BFA student originally from Boston. She invited me into the printmaking studio, the location of her most recent artistic endeavors. I had the pleasure of seeing some of her most recent work, along with discussing her artistic experience and how being at Cornell has allowed her to grow as an artist. Experimentation was the thing she identified as most central to her artistic ethic and practice, and it was readily apparent when I first set eyes on her art.

Conine’s work spans a copious number of mediums; from rug tufting to ceramic pottery to printmaking to photography, she’s constantly experimenting and adopting new techniques. Her experiences are similarly varied. She’s spent time with muralists in Boston, making pottery in Vermont and even teaching at an art center. “[At Cornell], with all the facilities we have access to … I’ve learned so many new tools and techniques that my art now is really just experimenting with all these new things that I’m learning,” she said. Conine came into Cornell as a potter, but discovered a love for printmaking through the classes Cornell offers. 

She then pulled from her collection to show me an example, laying out six pieces of paper on the table to put together her piece. The sheets came together like a mosaic or a puzzle, forming an almost magical scene of people relaxing on a lake. “This is the coolest thing I’ve done most recently; I’m excited about it. I figured out how to transfer a digital image onto the handmade paper. This is actually a film photo.” She had processed color film, printed it large-scale and soaked the paper so that the image would transfer. The result was a dreamlike picture that retained all the intriguing texture and color of the handmade paper. Its materiality was what drew Conine to the medium in the first place. Papermaking, one of her current experiments, allows her to consider the paper as well as the image overlaid on top. To her, material is becoming increasingly important, and that’s reflected in the way she thinks about her pieces. “The way that the paper took the photo is really interesting to me. Anything printed on handmade paper sits super well on the paper and feels like part of the piece as a material … It’s photo, print, and handmade paper all in one.”