Lynne Avadenka is an American artist/printmaker. She is known for her works that explore text and image, the physical and philosophical idea of the book, and the mystery and beauty of visual language.
Among Avadenka's awards are a 2009 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship and individual artist grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. Residencies and teaching opportunities have taken her to Germany, Israel, Italy, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia.
Avadenka was the director of Signal-Return, a Detroit nonprofit arts organization, from 2013 - 2024.
Avadenka's art is exhibited and collected internationally, including Bibliotecha Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; The British Library, London; The Detroit Institute of Arts; The Jewish Museum, New York; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan; The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York; The New York Public Library; Museum Meermano/The House of the Book, The Hague, The Netherlands; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin ; The Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and over 50 Special Collections and University Libraries.
“…About half the time, Avadenka tells stories through visual and alphabetic language of her own construction, but equally as often she chooses found text by other writers, an act of engagement that she views as a kind of dialogue over time. Avadenka works at constant translation — not the literal movement from one written language to another, but the even more subjective process of translating written content to a visual medium.
...This is Avadenka’s gift: capturing the endless and shifting combinations at the intersection of language as content, design, and physical impact of the mark on the page.”