Annalise Gratovich's solo exhibition "Carrying Things From Home" at Hecho a Mano in Santa Fe presents eight large-scale, hand-carved woodblock prints created between 2014 and 2025. The life-size prints feature totemic, matryoshka-like figures adorned with flora, fauna, and embroidered Ukrainian textile patterns, exploring themes of displacement, heritage, and belonging. Gratovich, who runs High Low Print Co. in Austin, spent up to six months carving each block and used up to 2,000 pieces of hand-dyed paper per print through chine collé, working with a team of four to operate a press over four by eight feet.
The exhibition matters because it addresses urgent questions about how war, migration, and severed cultural ties shape identity and memory, using a traditional printmaking technique to create deeply personal and communal works. Gratovich's practice also highlights the role of craft and collaboration in contemporary art, and her upcoming residency in Thailand and keynote at the Guild of Bookworkers' conference underscore her growing influence in the printmaking field.