Before moving to Wisconsin in 2020, I spent eighteen months splitting my time between my parents’ house in Southern California and my grandparents’ vacant vacation home in Arizona. This was a period of emotional growing pains for me, with each location providing its own challenges. In Arizona I was physically isolated in a way I had never experienced before, in a two-square-mile town where I didn’t have a job and didn’t know anybody. I spent most of my time baking bread and having anxiety attacks. In California I was an adult living in my parents’ home again after seven years away, which was emotionally isolating in a way that reminded me of being fifteen years old. In both places, making art was one of the few things that helped me process what I was experiencing and actually made me feel like a human person. When I ended up back in California full time, after realizing I might not make it back again if I kept spending long stretches alone in Arizona, my studio became the only space I felt truly comfortable in. It was barely more than a shed in my parents’ backyard, but I could sit on the floor and listen to my music and paint my little heart out all day, which was exactly what I needed in that moment.

the dairy queen parking lot at 3:47 on a tuesday afternoon is a collection of reductive relief prints that are inspired by the landscapes I was surrounded by during those months. The view of my mother’s vegetable garden and fruit trees from my studio, the bluest blue sky stretching forever behind a rest stop in the middle of the desert where I stopped halfway to have a panic attack in my car. The night sky over the marshlands across from the house in Arizona, and the lemon tree and rosemary bushes that my grandmother planted in that backyard decades ago. I had several of the most difficult days of my life in those places, and also had some of the loveliest moments of peace.

Accompanying the relief prints is my artist’s book, in the midst, which comprises intaglio prints, handmade paper, and beeswax. The book also depicts this specific period of my life, and with the change in printing method and medium these prints create an interactive, tactile experience. Each page turned changes the landscape as you move through the book, offering the viewer a glimpse into how I felt while moving through this period of slow growth. in the midst represents some of my more difficult moments, when the world felt muted, and the road ahead seemed hazy. The works in this exhibition reflect that time in my life, as I view it now looking back four years later. Each piece captures a particular perspective of the relationship between tranquility and turmoil, and serves as a reminder that growth is not linear, and sometimes healing happens when you least expect it.

Parker Markin (he/him) is a printmaker and book artist currently located in Milwaukee. Born and raised in Southern California, Markin spent several years living in Oregon and Washington before relocating to Wisconsin to attend the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2024. Recent exhibitions include faux real (2022), Var 5th Street; Woodland Pattern: Then As Now (2022), the Layton Gallery at MIAD; Echoes & Ripples (2023), Milwaukee City Hall; and Luminous Matrix (2023), Grove Gallery. For more, check out Markin’s Instagram account @parkermarkin.