Hunt Residencies X

Post-Residency

Artist bio

Liz Cuminale is a printmaker and illustrator working out of Buffalo New York. They studied at SUNY Purchase earning their bachelors degree in printmaking in 2024 alongside the President’s Award for Achievement in the School of Art + Design. Liz’s process utilizes the technical and experimental aspects of print to depict distorted, archetypal figures in works dealing with themes of desensitization, escapism, fantasy and obsoletion.

Artist statement

The core of my work are themes of desensitization, escapism, fantasy and obsoletion expressed through the visual language of print. The process of creating the matrix weaves itself into the narrative. For this body of work all the prints are relief based but each one was created in a very different way from one another. Wanted is the most traditional woodcut, utilizing cross hatching and extrapolating it into a pattern contained within a figure rather than giving it form. Wood Paneling is Paradise is carved from linoleum and etched with lye lending its caustic properties to create a texture of decay in the final print. The World is Not Made For You Anymore is another woodcut where in opposition to the others I ditched the delicate carving tools; the block was made from beaten-up plywood I found in the Church of Scientology’s garbage and it was jigsawed into the silhouette of the horse.

The content of these works explore the archetype of the cowboy. The quintessential symbol of American freedom that is reduced to fantasy. Cowboys don’t exist anymore.

Take Aways

This opportunity through Hunt Residencies was a perfect fit for my stage in life and also my practice. I moved to Buffalo in August 2025 after completing my undergrad at SUNY Purchase the previous year. Naturally I hit the post grad slump and didn’t make meaningful work in over a year. Hunt Residencies gave me the push I needed to make work via providing a community of other artist-that I may not have met outside this, studio space and mentorship that makes me feel more confident navigating our local art scene.

Pre-Residency

Artist statement

Humans have a sense of morbid fascination that leaks into culture. Media allows people to be voyeurs of the grotesque and perverse through mediums that negate the need for a viewer’s physical presence. This separation from reality de-humanizes the person into character and the body into object that is broken down, sexualized, abused, sensationalized, and exploited. The advent of the internet has further lead to cultural desensitization by endless amounts of depravity being instantly accessible. Further making people able to participate in depravity anonymously. The taboo is the undertow of things people love and humor, beauty and fun are able to exist within it. I utilize maximalism to capture the overstimulating nature of content and the internal tension in my work. I pull inspiration from a chronologically diverse archive of images based on Catholicism, the circus, Mondo documentaries, cult horror movies, vintage erotica, early internet references such as goatse.cx and Chris Chan. My subject mater often contains distorted figures as archetypes. Similarly my processes for making involves mixed materials and emphasis on the technical aspects of print and illustration.