paul j. yank - artist

Paul Yank’s sculptures are primarily created out of welded and forged steel. Using thin rods of steel, Yank drew his subjects in three-dimensional drawings in space, while capturing their character through the melting and molding of their features. Yank’s addition of Tiffany styled stained glass brings each subject to life creating brilliance in color and drama. Paul Yank’s sculptures are one of a kind, avant-garde, and innovated in their contribution to the art world.

"Whether working with forged or welded metal interspersed with colored glass or multiple layers of intaglio inks in monoprints, Yank’s process often involves multiple perspectives to achieve varying results. From his time as a sculptor-in-residence at the Milwaukee Public Museum early in his career, Paul Yank has always had an affinity for multiplicity of cultures around the world, as can be seen in much of his work. When Yank and his family moved to Cedarburg in 1966, he started renovating an 1848 former brewery building to transform it to an artist studio and arts complex. Over the years Yank has served as mentor for and shared his studio space with many artists eager to learn printmaking in a studio space filled with equipment typically found only in universities". Until his recent passing Paul Yank  fulfilled is role as an arts leader and mentor for more than 50 years in Cedarburg.  

Paul's unique monoprint printmaking process provides and artist with the opportunity to fully explore variations of a piece/subject. These variations include colors, mirrored images, textures, detailing, etc. Each piece is unique and an original piece of art. On this site only a small sample of his work is shown. Many of his pieces have more than one version and images of them are available upon request. The process includes multiple steps starting with an original sketch of the general subject. The original sketch is then used to create two inked plates, one on the back of the original piece and one on a plastic sheet that a thin layer of ink was applied. This is done by tracing the original image while it is laid on the plastic sheet. These two plates are them transferred to multiple sheets used to create stencils and original base versions of the subject. The stencils permit the artist to then apply inked areas with the opportunity  to alters each pieces colors and even textures. After the piece is fully inked it is then ready to be detailed using a variety of colored pencils, pens or other detailing media.