Graphic Design Illustration Member Printmaking Screen Print

Ms Browns Lounge Studio

posted by Amber Weaver July 1, 2018

Inspired by colour, design, and culture, Joanna’s work reflects an investigation into contemporary manifestations of personal, cultural and social identity. The stories are told via prints that often include alternate personas, voices & characters emerging from this narrative and reflect a delight in the potential of difference, and revel in absurdity.

This research began some time ago, at birth, when her parents conspired to make sure she was going to be extremely confused. Heading off into the world as an Australian born, American citizen with Dutch and Armenian heritage was no doubt going to make things a little tricky.

Her father was an Art Director and original ‘Mad Man’ and as a result, she lived and breathed the art of advertising from an early age, studied graphic design before the advent of the mac…then ended up at university studying printmaking in her late twenties.

Along the way, she developed a healthy obsession with handprinted flocked wallpaper in a café in Brooklyn, ate dolma in her paternal home in Queens, hung out in a boat on the canals of Amsterdam and made a documentary about a trip to Yerevan.

On return to the far north coast of NSW, Australia she set up Ms Browns Lounge Studio and began to put all the disparate bits back together…The prints and products that came out of her studio is the result of these journeys.

As comfortable with a pen as with a mouse, her practice covers multiple forms of printmaking (with a particular fondness for screen printing on paper & textiles) digital design, illustration and artists books.

Now as an official People of Print Member, she has an ongoing curiosity for traditional printing methods and a particular fondness for the beauty of ink on paper.