CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART GRADUATE DREGREE EXHIBITION 2025  
GRADUATES \\ WORK \\ ABOUT \\
CARA
O’CONNOR
DEPARTMENT
PRINT MEDIA







My practice explores how humans seek meaning through personal experience and collective narratives. Drawing from my studies of religion, myth, and my own lived experiences, I investigate the tension between individual realities—grief, longing, and mental health— and societal structures that often feel indifferent or inaccessible. These moments of dissonance reveal how personal struggles intersect with a world that can feel detached from individual suffering.

As a printmaker, I use processes that reflect layered experiences. Layering in printmaking mirrors how we process, filter, and reconstruct our understanding of the world. Altering photographs, I explore the tension between reality and interpretation, reflecting on unreliable memory and the separation between subject and observer. Photography’s ability to freeze and fragment moments in time parallels how we never fully inhabit the present.

Influenced by thinkers like T. M. Lehrmann, who examines the psychology of belief, William Eggington, who explores the cultural role of narrative and myth, and Elyn Saks, whose work addresses mental health and resilience, I delve into questions of truth, meaning making, and vulnerability. Through my work, I hold space for viewers to consider their intersections of personal and collective realities, inviting reflection on connection, isolation, and the myths we construct to understand the human experience.



Filtering 
2024, Woodblock diptych, 12" x 24" each
How the Past Feels
2023, Archival Print with Silkscreen, 20" x 30"
Where Have You Gone 
2024, Woodblock diptych 12" x 24" each