Creativity Works Internship: Gwendolyn Putz ’25

Printmaking major Gwendolyn Putz didn’t know much about Creativity Works until her junior year, when she attended a talk by the previous year’s cohort. 

“Sitting and watching the other students present their topics, I immediately knew that not only was this something for me, but that I already had such a clear idea of what I wanted to do,” she says.

The project became an exhibition called Seeking Sisu: From Finland, with Love, a series of fine art prints based on photographs from her Finnish family background. They were presented at the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. The project evokes the history of her family’s displacement from the Karelia region in Finland by the Soviet Union in the 1940s. 

Museum curator Janine LaBounty said it was a “joy” to work with Putz because of her passion for her heritage and her art. 

“We would not have been exposed to her ideas, her passion, her artwork or her organizational skills without Creativity Works,” LaBounty says. “We were all surprised by the fact that this was her internship, not the Cleveland Institute of Art’s, and that she had to develop it and make it happen. We would be so very happy if another student chose the Finnish Heritage Museum as a partner for their internship.”

Putz had always loved looking at family photos and listening to stories about her relatives. 

“Something about the faces of past generations piqued my interest like nothing else, even before I was in college,” she says. “Coming from a unique family background was another aspect that added layers of interest to these photos. Hearing stories of my Mummi (grandmother) and Iso Mummi (great-grandmother) during times of war was shocking and brought a heavy feeling to much of what I saw in these albums. How did all these things happen? And how did I end up where I am? I started to question how the experiences of the women in my family affected our history.”

For the exhibition, she printed two editions of lithographs, one edition of etchings and a series of monoprints. 

“The lithographs I printed were the largest I had worked with to date, around 22 x 30 inches. All the works were framed and presented alongside the cultural artifacts in the museum’s collection,” she says.

Putz continued the project for her BFA, and she says Creativity Works has been instrumental to the work she has developed since then. 

“Something that was really important was the independence this project gave me. I came up with a lot of the answers to my own questions and really learned by doing,” she says. “There was still a really important balance held between guidance from my advisor and feeling like I was on my own, but this was the first time I really understood what my future in fine arts could look like, which was really exciting for me.”

Putz will join Ohio University’s Printmaking MFA program this fall.

Photo caption: Gwendolyn Putz, right, chats with a visitor to her Creativity Works exhibition, Seeking Sisu: From Finland, with Love, at the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Ohio. Her lithograph, “(Suffer) for my family,” hangs above the case. Submitted photo.