Karen Albanese Campbell

I am an award-winning painter, printmaker and quilter creating expressionistic narrative art that is marked by the symbolic relationships I create between time-traveling human figures, abstracted landscapes and personal artifacts. Through artmaking I am connecting the dots of my life with the stories of people around the globe throughout time, creating a pathway to empathy. Visual metaphors and imagination are essential partners throughout my artistic practice. My art frequently makes reference to the singular issue of forced displacement, as a result of violence, natural disasters and poverty. I believe we share this universal trauma; it has been embedded and passed down through the generations of all families: my family is no exception. Looking back to my own ancestors, with sketchy oral histories and all that can be inferred through historical research, my art can ‘put meat on the bones’ of the fragments and scraps I possess. I use my art making to explore what might have happened to my family since facts are lost to distance, time and decay. The figures and ideas in my art are like time-travelers, loosely mingling with one another, not bound by time, location or historical facts. As a result, I use whatever aids me in creating art about the search for belonging: my style creates fluid transitional spaces, can be firmly representational, is often highly patterned and freely takes abstract directions.

Awards and Exhibitions

She was curated into the 15th Havana (Cuba) Biennial. She has exhibited nationally at Northern Illinois University Art Museum; Tubac (AZ) Center for the Arts; Bradbury Art Museum, Arkansas State University; Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas, TX and around Ohio at Otterbein University; 934@CMH Gallery at John Glenn Airport; and Priscilla Tyson Cultural Arts Center. Solo exhibitions include the Dairy Barn Art Center (Athens, OH); The James Cancer Hospital Art Gallery at OSU; Wehrle Gallery at Ohio Dominican University; and The Grange Insurance Audubon in Columbus, OH. She exhibited at ArtPrize 2021, in Grand Rapids, MI. She has been awarded ”Best in Show” twice at the Ohio Exhibit at the Zanesville Art Museum, in two different categories: textiles and prints. She was awarded “Best in Show” and “Juror’s Choice” at the OH+5: Contemporary Art of Our Region exhibit, The Dairy Barn Art Center (Athens, OH) in 2024. She was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Professional Award at the Ohio State Fair. She is in the permanent collection of the Columbus Museum of Art. She has been awarded grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council, including a GCAC “Big Ideas” grant which funded her 2021 project “Just Walls Public Art” to create art for social service agency waiting rooms. Artist residencies include InCahoots in Petaluma, CA and Jerome Art Center in Jerome, AZ. She was chosen to participate in a cultural exchange with printmakers in Havana, Cuba at Taller Experimental de Graphica in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Karen had her art and involvement in the Havana Biennial documented in a segment of WOSU’s “Broad & High” and a WOSU documentary still in production. The artist has art in public spaces at six Franklin County (Ohio) W.I.C. Clinics, Columbus Metropolitan Library Reynoldsburg branch, CapitolOne and The Vineyard Community Center In Columbus, OH.

Karen Albanese Campbell is a printmaker, painter and art quilter. Karen earned her BFA from Boston University, being one of the first of her Italian-American family to attend college.  Karen teaches printmaking at Phoenix Rising Printmaking Cooperative and at Chautauqua Art in NY. Albanese Campbell earned her BFA from Boston University and she is the current president of Phoenix Rising Printmaking Cooperative in Columbus, OH.

albanesecampbell@gmail.com

@petersmadre

Karen’s Website 

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2020 21st Annual Wills Creek Exhibition of Fine Art of the Allegheny Arts Council, Cumberland, Maryland
2020 “Visible Ink: Group Show of Phoenix Rising Printmaking Members”, The Ohio State University Faculty Club, Columbus, OH2019
Ohio Art League Fall Show, Columbus Cultural Arts Center, Columbus, Ohio2019
My [Creative] Space, Carnegie Gallery. Columbus Metropolitan Library, Columbus, Ohio
2019 74th Annual Ohio Exhibition at the Zanesville Museum of Art
2019 The Great Portrait Show at Blockfort, Columbus, Ohio
2019 Phoenix Rising Printmaking Cooperative Core Member Group Show at the Studio
2019 “Ingrained: Large Scale Woodcut Prints”, Carnegie Gallery at Columbus Metropolitan Library
2018 Ohio Art League Fall Juried Show at the Shot Tower Gallery at Fort Hayes
2018 BigInk at Phoenix Rising Printmaking Cooperative Pop-Up Printing Event
2018 “Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Competition”, Columbus, Ohio
2018 Delta National Small Prints Exhibition 2018 at Bradbury Art Museum, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, AR
2017 The Bath House Cultural Center, “Día de los Muertos: The Path of Winged Souls”, Dallas, TX
2017 “Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Competition”, Columbus, OH
2017 “Pinchat 7”, 30 prints by 30 Ohio printmakers. Paradise Garage, Wild Goose Creative & Lineage Brewing, Columbus, OH
2017 Blockfort Columbus, “Beautiful Words”, Columbus, OH
2016 ROY G BIV “Small Works Exhibition”, ROY G BIV Gallery, Columbus, OH
2016 “10th Anniversary Small Works” at Wild Goose Creative, Columbus, OH2016 “Zanesville Museum of Art All Ohio, 72nd Annual Exhibition”, Zanesville, OH
2016 “Pinchat 6”, 30 prints by 30 Ohio printmakers at Paradise Garage, Wild Goose Creative & Lineage Brewing, Columbus, OH
2016 “D’art for Art”, Included by invitation and jury into a biennial fundraiser hosted by the Women’s Board of the Columbus Museum of Art in support of the Museum’s special programming
2015 “Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Competition”, Columbus, OH
2014 “A Gathering of Images” Phoenix Rising Printmaking Cooperative, High Road Gallery, Worthington, OH
2014 “Zanesville Museum of Art All Ohio, 70th Annual Exhibition” , Zanesville, OH
2014 “Connecticut Women Artists – 85th Annual National Open Juried Exhibition”, Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT
2014 “Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Competition”, Columbus, OH

2013 “Strokes of Genius”, National juried painting exhibition, Maryland Federation of Art, Circle Gallery, Annapolis, MD
2013 “Ohio Art League Spring Juried Exhibition”, at the State Library of Ohio, Columbus, OH
2013 “Images 2013”, National juried gallery exhibition at Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, Robeson Gallery of the HUB/Robeson Center, University Park, The Pennsylvania State University
2013 “Schwa Show: National Juried Art Exhibition”, Pitt County Arts Council at Emerge, Greenville, NC
2012 “Art for Abolition”, traveling art collection showing art quilt, “Woman on the Stairs”, Columbus, OH
2012 “Figure It Out”, Craft Studio Gallery at the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO
2012 “Agora 9”, Junctionview Studios and Couchre Collective, Columbus, OH
2012 “101st Exhibition of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts”, Mystic Art Center, Mystic, CT2012 “200”, German Village Art League @ Columbus Metropolitan Library Carnegie Gallery, Columbus, OH
2011 “Cultivating Growth”, Gallery 831, Columbus, OH
2011 “Ohio State Fair Fine Arts Competition”, Columbus, OH
2011 “Ohio Art League Annual Fall Juried Exhibit”, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Schnormeier Gallery, Mount Vernon, OH

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 Phoenix Rising Printmaking Cooperative “New Monotypes” in the Hallway Gallery
2018 Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library, exhibiting “The Table Runner Project” and the “Canticles” series
2018 Groveport Municipal Hall Art Gallery Groveport, Ohio
2017 VineyardColumbus North Hall Gallery Columbus, Ohio

PUBLIC ART
2016 Vineyard Community Center, Mural, Vineyard Columbus, Columbus, Ohio

AWARDS
2019 Zanesville Art Museum 74th Annual Ohio Exhibit “Best in Show” for Prints and Drawings for “Moment of Silence”
2014 “Beaux Arts Club Award for Excellence in Fiber Art” for art quilt “Not Enough Sky”Zanesville Museum of Art, Zanesville, Ohio
2013 1st Place, “Schwa Show: National Juried Art Exhibition”, Pitt County Arts Council at Emerge,Greenville, North Carolina