Employee Directory

Iris Kumar Professor
Visual and Performing Arts

MFA – Printmaking Major, Ceramics Minor, School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa  
MA – Art, School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa  
BFA – Printmaking/Ceramics Major, School of Art and Architecture, University of Michigan

Iris Kumar’s areas of expertise are in traditional intaglio and relief printmaking; processes that explore integrating digital prints with traditional media; and combining printed imagery from both digital and traditional sources with painted imagery on canvas and carved wood. She is a member of Full Tilt Print Studio a professional print shop and has exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally in Germany, the Republic of North Macedonia, and Japan.

She is a bipolar artist who has lived with rheumatoid arthritis for over thirty years. She believes that the discipline of following a strict self-care and medical regime is the pathway forward to health and success. She has not been hospitalized in thirty years and has spent the last twenty leading and working in academia.

Her goal, as a professor and a bipolar artist is to use her art to advocate for eliminating the stigma of mental illness. Her desire to help others and create awareness gave her the courage to begin to share experiences with bipolar disorder with her students, and to apply for Insights VI, an exhibit held by the Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation. Her work is part of their private collection.

She creates art to show “what life feels like” (Marvin Bell). She communicates how natural cycles of the world correspond to life experiences. Her work focuses on capturing various stages of growth and renewal within an environment that exhibits elements of decomposition and decay.

Ambiguous landscape serves as a metaphor for human experience – growth, the elusiveness of life, illness, aging, and hope. Her face and eyes, leaves, hands, and flowers are dichotomous symbols both of healing and resiliency, and deterioration and fragility.

To read more, please visit her website at irismorehousekumar.com.