Rooted Collage

Tamara Kaplan was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in the seventies when plaids and bell bottoms were the fashion. She currently lives and works in Warren, Rhode Island, where she stays true to her art school look. She received her BFA in ceramics from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and her MA and MAT in Art Education from Rhode Island School of Design. For the majority of her career she has been toggling between the non-profit arts education world and the art/craft world. She considers herself an analog craftsperson and teaching artist whose work focuses on process heavy media, such as printmaking, paper cutting, encaustic and clay. Kaplan is interested in the connectedness between inter-generational trauma and the natural world. She conceptually explores her Jewish childhood in Northern Central Pennsylvania, family stories of resistance in Czarist Russia during the pograms of the early 20th century, and the idea of hiding in plain sight.