Erin's Projects

BFA Alumni

Major: Sculpture

Graduation Year: 1994

Artist Statement:

My work for the past five years has centered on essential ideas of building community, storytelling, and home. I use printmaking, people's stories, and the book form in non-traditional ways to create books, sculpture and installations.
I am focused on the stories that are directly around me, as well as themes of small town and family. Wendell Berry said, “Because I’ve never separated myself from my home neighborhood, I cannot identify myself to myself apart from it.” This work speaks about my struggle and delight with my own home neighborhood, and my identifications with other small towns and home neighborhoods.

Biography:

Erin Sweeney lives and works in southern New Hampshire. She received her MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she was awarded the Elizabeth C. Roberts Prize for Graduate Book Arts. She also has a BFA in Sculpture from the Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine.

Sweeney exhibits nationally, most recently at 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland, OR, the Artmobile in Bucks County, PA and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME.
​
Additionally, Sweeney is an instructor, teaching book arts workshops at her Lovely In The Home Press. She also travels to teach workshops at many locales, including Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Stone House, the University of Southern Maine’s Book Arts Intensive; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cló Ceardlann in Donegal, Ireland, and the Philadelphia Center for the Book. She is a member of the NH State Council on the Arts’ Artist Roster, and is a faculty member at New Hampshire Institute of Art.

She can also drive a backhoe, rake gravel for extended periods of time, and install septic pipe.