MFA 2021 Artists MFA 2021 Artists: Emma Young

Emma Young - Photo credit: Gabriela Herman

MFA 2021 Artists

Emma Young

UMass Dartmouth 2021 MFA Thesis Exhibition

About Emma Young

Beginning with a love of language and a belief that literacy is liberatory, Emma is a poet, designer, and craftsperson. She leads accessible workshops in writing and book arts for all ages and has worked on literacy projects with public libraries and nonprofit organizations.

She holds a BA from Hampshire College in writing and literature and served as Poet Laureate of the Town of West Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard Island, where she runs a small design studio focused on typeset letterpress printing and handmade papers.

As a Teaching Fellow, UMassD CVPA Senator, Secretary for the Graduate Student Senate, and Chancellor’s Centennial Scholar, Emma found great value as a part of this community.

Statement

I engage in deliberate, physical craft practices as a means of exploring the materiality of language and knowledge. When writing, the letterform is an elemental eventuation of thought, and a single thread forms texture and pattern in weaving. These are the products of thinking in process.

My research reconsiders systems and pedagogy across disciplines, and I present social and labor history through these lenses. My poems exist in the work as a personal, contemporaneous experience.

In this body of work, I grew plants for papermaking, dyeing, and inks. The texture and color of my papers result from this labor and support my poems, photographs, and drawings, which in turn document my processes. I regard all products of my labor, textual and material, as the articulation of knowledge, as language.