Artists

KIKI SMITH
Always original in her mark making, Kiki Smith’s prints reveal her unique sense of line and form. Kiki Smith has explored a broad range of subjects, including religion, folklore, mythology, natural science, art history, and feminism. By turns intimate, universal, visceral, and fragile, Smith’s art renders the figure in frank, nonheroic terms, expressing its dual aspects of vulnerability and strength.

"I decided I wanted to make images that would be useful and positive in daily life"
"I thought of female images that I liked, female superheroes"
Prints
Interview





LOUISE BOURGEOIS



AMY CUTLER


MARCEL DZAMA


KEEGAN McHARGUE

Friends

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse:

Prof. J

Kim VanSomeren

Nels

Peggy

Dawn

Brandon

Mary

The Lost

Rhino

The Great

Delaware

Justin Kemp

Seth

Viper

Karen

B.C.

UWL-types:

Lisa

Becca

Cori

Heather

Jessi Mootz

Lachness

Trin

Jillian

Libby

Hobo Jeff

Carly

Meagan

Kaitlynn

<>California College of Art:

Weston Takeshi

Val Britton

Michelle Carlson

Jamie Vasta

Alika Cooper

Adam Blue

Friends

Prof. J

Kim VanSomeren

Nels

Mary

Delaware

The Great

JJhemp

B.C.

Know Your Babies

Lisa

Becca

Cori

Printmaking Issues

Penny Siopis
I'm Sorry, 2004. Etching, aquatint. Edition of 20. 17 3/5 x 14 4/5"
Printed by Randy Hemminghaus. Published by David Krut Fine Art

A Twenty-first Century Etching Revival
By Alexandra Anderson-Spivy
Summer 2005

What could be more old-fashioned, more traditional, or more uncool in our mad-for-digital, video-besotted early twenty-first century than etching? Today's salacious collector seems more likely to invite someone up to see his shark preserved in formaldehyde than to issue an invitation to "come up and see my etchings." Nevertheless, artists have enthusiastically embraced this process for some 500 years ever since German artist Urs Graf produced the earliest dated etching in 1513. As subsequent artists from Rembrandt and Piranesi to Whistler and Picasso have demonstrated, etching has long offered a remarkable emotional and tonal range of expression and innovation.

This versatile printmaking technique promotes, in fact requires, an intense connection between the hands-on proficiency of the artist and the delicate surfaces upon which he or she has chosen to work. It calls for painstaking plate preparation and adaptation, agility and patience. (1) It also demands fine-tuned, skilled collaborative efforts between artist and printer. (Contemporary artists often may print their own work.) In the modern world, etching has been adapted to the most arcane engineering processes; industry can routinely etch various metals, infinitely tiny computer chips, and other substances with lasers, or with chemicals or gases.

The current summer exhibition organized by International Print Center New York confirms the idea that right now there is a notable revival of interest in etching occurring among artists across the world. It's actually hardly the first time this has happened. During the latter half of the 19th century, the artists of the Barbizon School were the instigators of an earlier etching revival. Allied with the rise of interest in the sketch and in working from nature, this passionate interest in etching rapidly spread from France to England and the United States,(2) as the informality and spontaneity provided by the etching needle gained critical acceptance.

Another such revival is surely overdue. Perhaps today's artists have tired of the weightlessness of computer software, the seductions of Photoshop, the slick uniformity of the surfaces of digitally printed images. The physicality and subtleties of traditional etching processes continue to exert a powerful attraction on a surprising number of them-draftsmen and painters alike-as this exhibition demonstrates.

Diversity and experimentation are characteristics that define IPCNY's summer show. The fifty-eight works included in New Prints 2005/Summer represent work by forty-four artists and various presses across the country and from abroad. (International sources include Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and South Africa). Their work offers viewers a dazzling menu of techniques, expressive styles, and content that once again proves the relevance of etching's seductive powers.

The jury for the show examined a fascinating array of submissions. Some of the only consistent elements these works shared were a highly ambitious technical range plus an inclination to push the boundaries of the medium and a general inclination to experiment very freely with color, and scale and idiosyncratic content. It's interesting that no style or subject prevailed.

The sheer range represented by the geographical and stylistic diversity, celebrity and age of the artists who were finally selected is impressive and makes for juxtapositions on the wall that are stimulating and fresh. Veteran artists such as Polly Apfelbaum, Kiki Smith, Robert Kushner and John Walker appear here along with a panoply of artists who may be new to viewers. Apfelbaum's Love Flowers presents a cheerfully faux-naïve, intimate image of starry flowers tossed off in what could be a pattern sketched for a quilt. Kiki Smith contributes a delicate and entirely sinister rendering (Jewel) of the front feet and claws of a wolf or a very big dog against a stark white ground. Kushner in Cup of Gold prints his vibrant line drawing of a lily as direct gravure in white ink on black silk and embellishes the image with his signature squares of gold leaf. In Box Canyon, John Walker has translated the verve and scale of his abstract paintings into a waterfall of etched color and form that boils across and down across some 21 square feet (81 x 38 inches), making it the largest work in the show and one of the most powerful.

Space restrictions mean I can't discuss every artist included in the exhibition, but I will mention a few characteristic highlights. Sandow Birk's mordantly funny and cautionary image, Accidents, is from his series, Leading Causes of Death in America. Using a slyly social realist-film noir style, this artist depicts a modern woman courting danger, as she talks on her mobile while driving her car. Another sprightly image of disaster-a little cottage swept over a waterfall in black and white, appears in Dan Steeves' a hint of awe and reverence and wonder. Fernando Martí has made one of the relatively few political images in the show-his Amapolis/Poppies pairs kneeling prisoners with scarlet poppy fields. Yuji Hiratsuka's etching and aquatint images of fabulously accessorized modern Japanese women (Autumn Tints and Crops) not only update the traditions of the Japanese print with impressive skill but also combine deft social satire with ambitious technique, since Hiratsuka is both artist and printer of these works.

Several artists have used etching to create artists' books. Leslie Eliet's self-printed Sea of Dreams is a strikingly dramatic abstract narrative in accordion form. Nancy Powhida's black and white book, Cabin in the Woods has a sinister Henry Darger-like charm. Sarah Plimpton's pages for her book Doubling Back quietly harmonize poem and aquatint image.

The rising young South African artist, Penny Siopis, is represented by four searing images of a child's shame and pain from her striking suite of ten etchings. Annie Heckman's She Falls in the Tank series is memorable for its beautiful draftsmanship and unusually dynamic imagery of a cat falling into water.

Several more abstract etchings are also visually compelling, technically proficient, and often clever. Justin Quinn contributes a gloss on Moby Dick that represents a "transcription" of a chapter of the book into the letter "E" in his drypoint, Moby Dick Chapter 44 or 4,349 times E. Theresa Chong's Mapping Notations and Gestures based on Bach Suite Prelude Series poetically translates sound into a mysterious black and white galaxy of points of light. Jill Parisi has contributed what may be the most unusual work in the exhibition. Her piece Stellae transforms nature into wonderful hand-colored, hand-cut etchings-evanescent paper sculptures that float in space. In short, this show offers a look at a great variety of works as contemporary artists continue their exploration of the still seductive marvels of etching.


Alexandra Anderson-Spivy is an art critic and writer who lives in New York.

New Prints 2005/Summer-Etchings Selection Committee: Desirée Alvarez, artist; Alexandra Anderson-Spivy, writer; Judy Hecker, Assistant Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, the Museum of Modern Art; Jennifer Melby, Master Printer; Harris Schrank, print collector and IPCNY Trustee; and Michael Steinberg, Director, Michael Steinberg Fine Art.





Printmaking as a Craft
SOURCE: Artichoke 17 no1 38-40 Spr 2005

Misa Nikolic
"The creation of a work requires craftsmanship. Great artists prize craftsmanship most highly. They are the first to call for its painstaking cultivation, based on complete mastery. They above all others constantly strive to educate themselves anew in thorough craftsmanship. It has often enough been pointed out that the Greeks, who knew quite a bit about works of art, use the same word techne for craft and art and call the craftsman and the artist by the same name: technites."(FN1) One wonders what sort of work Martin Heidegger was thinking of when he wrote these lines in the 1960s, a time when the mainstream art world appeared to have abandoned craftsmanship altogether, first in favour of abstraction, and later in favour of appropriation, industrial production, and mass reproduction. However, one need only question the definition of craft -- that is, what sort of things craftsmanship may be applied to -- to see his true meaning, which is that techne denotes "a mode of knowing" and not art or craft per se. Put another way, techne is neither the work of art itself nor the process of its creation; it is, he explains, the bringing forth of truth from its concealedness, or what the Greeks called aletheia.
Today we understand craft differently, by opposing it to mass production on one hand, and to fine art on the other. The German critic Walter Benjamin tells us that "the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition,"(FN2) thereby diminishing its "aura;" a term he uses to encompass the work of art's authenticity and autonomy. Benjamin seems at first to be arguing that art loses its uniqueness when it is thus separated from the "fabric of tradition," but instead he claims that "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual,"(FN3) thus freeing it to become politically engaged.
What this means for the artist today is not simply that all technologies and media are now available for art-making, but that a balance must be found between traditional methods and materials (which can still carry the aura of art) and political currency (socially relevant meaning). This is where we may find techne today, and it is especially manifest in printmaking, the field which first felt the impact of technical reproducibility.
In the past, printmakers were in the enviable position of having their work available in more than one place. They could now reach the masses; however, their practice was still undeniably a craft requiring technical skill. Even the typesetters of the nineteenth century were craftsmen. Contemporary printmakers find themselves walking a fine line between this fabric of tradition and the political realm. Printmaking encompasses centuries-old media, such as woodcut and stone lithography, as well as newer technologies like etching, silkscreen, and photolithography. But does it also include digital art? Does experimenting with new forms of reproduction mean abandoning the umbrella of traditional printmaking? And how does the size of the edition affect our determination of what is a print? An offset press may produce two thousand copies per hour, but would we consider them to be as valuable as a dozen hand-pulled prints? Would we still consider them to be art? Clearly, printmaking as an art form relies on some notion of the indexical trace, the touch of the artist's hand, despite the intervention of reproductive technology. Printmaking as a craft, meanwhile, is still hindered by notions of mechanization and the removal of the artist's hand. This paradox has resulted in the virtual exclusion of printmaking from both academic discourse, which is greatly concerned with politics, as well as from other craft practices, which traditionally focus on the unique handmade object.
Nevertheless, a new term -- fine craft -- has evolved in recent years to encompass craft-based media with political content. Fine craft endeavours to account for the gray area between fine art and decorative or functional craft. This definition has been incorporated in the Canada Council's granting categories and is slowly being adopted by other agencies as well. The Saskatchewan Craft Council recently adopted a new definition of fine craft as "an artistic endeavour characterized by the creation, with skill and by hand, of three dimensional work that is rooted in, but may transform, transcend or maintain the traditions, techniques, and materials of the utilitarian object."(FN4) Only painting and drawing are excluded due to their adequate representation elsewhere.
Leslie Potter, one of the scc's exhibitions and education co-ordinators, suggests that defining craft is no longer necessary. "Fine art and fine craft have been crossing boundaries and converging for so long now, it only places limitations where we don't need them."(FN5) While there is still a latent theme of craft as specific handmade object-based media without overt political content, there is also a growing recognition of craft as an evolutionary field, one which encompasses techne.
In 1996, Lee McKay was one of the first print-makers to be included in the scc's annual Dimensions exhibition. McKay is known for his refined woodcut reduction technique, as well as collographs and etchings; however, his real interest lies in colour. His woodcuts commonly use eight to twelve colours, and are often printed on delicate rice paper -- an especially difficult ground due to the paper stretching during impressions, making registration difficult. Lately he has begun to experiment with transparent inks and varnishes, an approach that developed from his experience in graphic design and offset printing. A visit to McKay's studio reveals a continuous flow of ideas from the sketchbook to the computer to the woodblock. Mckay's own take on craft, on techne, seems to lie in the very practice of art, where ideas grow from hard work and discipline; a far cry from contemporary conceptual art and its approach of "applied philosophy."
If we return to Heidegger and accept techne as neither the product nor the process but rather as a mode of knowing, of uncovering truth, we may conclude that art is intended for reflection rather than consumption; that it is a process of thinking that extends from intention to interpretation. Hegel, who foreshadowed both Benjamin and Heidegger, saw this clearly: "The work of art has not such a naive self-centered being, but is essentially a question, an address to the responsive heart, an appeal to affections and to minds."(FN6) What better definition can there be of political currency, of meaning in art?
ADDED MATERIAL
Misa Nikolic is a Vancouver artist.
Lee McKay's prints will be Featured at the Saskatchewan Craft Council Gallery in Saskatoon, June 24 - August 14, 2005.
Luminate - 1, reduction woodcut, 29×40 cm, Lee McKay, 2004 photo courtesy of the artist

Footnotes
1. Martin Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art" in Poetry, Language, Thought, New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971, p. 59.
2. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Illuminations, New York: Shocken, 1968, p. 221.
3. Ibid., p. 224.
4. Interview with Leslie Potter, September 2004.
5. Ibid.
6. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, New York: Penguin, 1993, p. 78.

Printmaker Stories

I enjoyed reading this article from the worldprintmakers website about Canadian printmaker, Audrey Feltham and her husband, Jim visiting Maureen Booth in Spain. There are brief diary excerpts from Audrey about her experience travelling to the remote town where worldprintmakers is located. Some of them are very funny. She also mentions a technique Maureen taught her of some prints that she had done using a collograph technique that employs a metal-based epoxy glue.
I didn't know anything about Maureen, but now I am fascinated with her life and what she is doing. It's so amazing that these kind of people exist in this world.

Printmakers

Kiki Smith


Kiki Smith is one of my favorite printmakers. She combines eerie imagery with a very naive printmaking style.

Kiki Smith (American, born Germany, 1954) is among the most significant artists of her generation. Known primarily as a sculptor, she has also devoted herself to printmaking, which she considers an equally vital part of her work. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Kiki Smith: Prints, Books, and Things (2003), showcase the scope of Smith’s printed art and present it thematically, focusing on such topics as anatomy, self-portraiture, nature, and female iconography. This interactive Web site is similarly arranged and fosters a rich understanding of her innovative body of printed art, illustrating over 135 works in more than 50 comparative groupings. In the “Process” section, Smith’s creative thinking is explored through two series of evolutionary printed proofs and through video footage of the artist making prints.






Louise Bourgeois is another artist/printmaker that I admire. Her work has often been recommended to me along with Kiki Smith and Nancy Spero.

db artmage
The artist Jenny Holzer said: "When I review the testimony about what is wrong with women, Louise Bourgeois’ work is the perfect rebuttal." At nearly 93, Bourgeois, who hasn’t left her house in ten years, is hard at work making sculptures and installations from stitched fabric, wood, steel, latex and marble as well as drawings and prints. She still holds her famous "Sunday Salons" where artists are invited to bring work at their own risk. Bourgeois often includes text in her visual work and has kept a copious diary from a very young age. Bourgeois’ sculptures and installations use hooks, guillotines and sculptural incisions as flaying devices related to a disruptive past. Bourgeois uses events she saw as a young girl during and after WWI when large numbers of men returned from battle as amputees. Body parts are frequently the subject of her work. As the feminist artist Adrian Piper has said: Louise Bourgeois’ "work draws us into a space where the dynamics of power and surrender, of gender identity, the circumspection of the body, and relation to the mother are unavoidable. It forces us to become aware of our own status as incomplete adults." Bourgeois’ relationship to feminism is best epitomized by events of the late 70s.





Christina Santander


Cristina Santander, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a professor at the National School of Buenos Aires. She also worked in Paris in the workshop of engraving of S.W. Hayter and already exposed in many countries. She presented her work for the first time in Switzerland at the Gallery the Orangery. Her works are in several museums and private collections. Her creations are high colors and overflowing of imagination.






Mauricio Lasansky

Mauricio Lasansky has been making prints for more than 65 years — first in his native Argentina, then in New York City, and (more than fifty-five years) in Iowa City, Iowa. Best known for large scale prints in which he uses multiple plates and full ranges of color, Lasansky combines a spectrum of graphic techniques including etching, drypoint, aquatint and engraving. Throughout his stylistic evolution, he has created eloquent figural statements that are colorful, fresh and spontaneous.

Mauricio Lasansky has devoted himself to exploring the expressive possibilities of graphic arts. He has amassed a body of prints considered to be among the most powerful and impressive works by a contemporary artist in any medium, and has contributed significantly in establishing printmaking as a meaningful and critical art form of the 20th century. As a result, he has become one of the first in a generation of important printmakers to teach scores of students, who in turn are teaching scores of future generations in the United States and abroad. For all these reasons, Mauricio Lasansky is considered to be one of the "Fathers of 20th Century American Printmaking."






Judy Pfaff

Judy Pfaff
OXO-XOX, 2005
Letterpress, wax
Edition of 30, 13 by 24 inches

Judy Pfaff's sculptures, drawings and prints have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. She has been described as a "collagist in space." Pfaff was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2004. Judy has been working at Tandem Press in Madison, Wisconsin since 1996 producing over 30 prints.

I also admire Judy Pfaff's prints. Her work explores the dichotomies of chaos an order, organic and man made, Eastern and Western. All of these are packaged producing unusual and complex images. One of my former printfreak-peers has been working with Judy at Tandem press this past year. I hope to make it to Madison next Spring to visit Tandem Press.




Joel Elgin

CAER

This is my favorite print from my professor Joel Elgin. Joel Elgin was a student of Mauricio Lasansky. Printmaking was always a challenge for me, but eventually the gods granted me access into the world, and now I am enchanted with printmaking. Joel Elgin is the most influential person in my life. He emits his passion for intaglio printmaking onto all of his students. He guides them spiritually and technically in the print shop he refers to as the shop of love.

"CAER"
Oenghus is the son of the water spirit Boann and Dagda, the chief of Ireland’s gods… the giver of life and the bestower of all bounties. Oneghus dreamed of a beautiful young woman each night for over a year. He became so enchanted, so obsessed that he began to waste away from lack of food. Boann sent her people to search Ireland for the woman who visited Oenghus in his dreams. For a year they searched and failed while Oneghus became weaker. Bodb, the king of all the Sidhe (those who live in the fairy mounds, invisible to humans, where the gods have their homes) was summoned and within a year he discovered the woman at Lough Beul Draguin, at the Harp of Cliach. Oenghus rushed to discover the woman and at the Lough’s edge he saw “thrice fifty” women linked in pairs with silver chains. Among them was the woman who appeared in his dreams. She alone wore a necklace of gold. Bodb told Oenghus that her name was Caer, the daughter of Ethal Anbual, from the fairy dwelling of Uaman in Connacht. Oenghus was forbidden to speak to her until he was granted permission by Medb and Aiill, the King of Connacht. Medb and Ailill informed Dagda and Boann that they had no power over Caer’s father, Ethan Anabual, who refused to allow his daughter to marry the son of Dagda. Medb and Ailill sent soldiers to destroy the home of Ethan Anbual and to bring him back in chains. Even in chains he refused to turn over his daughter, saying that she and her maidens suffered from an enchantment which forced them to reside in the shape of swans for one year and in their own forms the following year. He told Oenghus to return to the Lough the following summer to see the truth. Ethan Anbual was believed to be sincere and was released. The following summer Oenghus returned to the Lough and saw “thrice fifty” swans on the water, each wore silver chains, and one wore a circlet of gold. Oenghus called to Caer to come to the bank of the Lough and speak with him. She agreed if he promised to allow her to return to the water, if she wished. He made his promise and she swam over and laid her head in his lap. Oenghus turned himself into a swan and they glided together three times around the Lough.. They then flew to Dagda’s palace and as they flew they sang so sweetly that all who heard were lulled into a sleep that lasted for three days and three nights.


JOEL ELGIN
"The rich history of my Celtic roots drives me to explore the numerous myths, mysteries and truths that exist in the forms of text and image. To know my past I have traveled three times to Ireland and each time been lost in the mist that exists between myth and truth.
I have become influenced (enchanted) by the colors, textures, smells, sounds and tastes of Ireland. Each myth and legend I discover through reading, then through actual physical exploration of the site demands the creation of a new print. The production of the print furthers my process of learning specific information and yet at the same time opens, more fully, the vein that connects me to my Irish heritage.
I have learned each moment I devote to researching mythology, icons, or wandering Irish ruins strengthens my deep respect and homage for my ancestry. The prints I create are a reflection of this respect."-Joel Elgin





Krishna Reddy


Krishna Reddy was born in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh in 1925. Krishna Reddy joined Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan 1941. He finished his studies there in 1946. After graduation, he taught art at Kalakshetra in the then Madras for three years between 1947 and 1950. Krishna Reddy went abroad in 195 1. For two years, he studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts, London and then he studied sculpture with Osip Zadkine between 1952 and 1955 in Paris and then with Marino Marini in Milan from 1956 to 1957. While in Paris, he also studied engraving with S W Hayter between 1953 and 1955.

Considered a master in intaglio printmaking, Krishna Reddy has been guest professor at many top-ranking universities in the USA. He became an associate director at Hayter's Atelier 17 in Pads since 1965. Reddy received the Padma Shri in 1972. Reddy's technique and style have distinguished him as one of the best printmakers of the world. Reddy's prints are abstract. He creates subtle grid-like designs on his plates with intricate texturisations. The myriad complex colour that he introduces in prints are marked by a contemplative approach to the infinite mysteries of nature.




Liz Decker

"Another member of the PICA Hatched group is Liz Decker. 'Cindy' 2005, Jenny Orchard, NSW Her exquisite little prints catch the eye immediately as 'something different' and on closer inspection you can't help but be a bit surprised by the traditional paper being replaced by dried apple slices! As a recent graduate and mature age student, Liz has stepped 'beyond (her) social role of wife and mother.' (Phillips, Imprint Magazine). Phillips writes, 'By disrupting artistic traditions and crossing academic and community cultures, Deckers can explore her artistic identity independantly of social ideals and cultural order.' which sums up the her drive to print outside the square in one chunky sentence! Its amazing how much detail you can squeeze onto a small slice of apple!"-Linden Langdon.
From Linden Langdon's blog




Stanley William Hayter

More than any other artist, Stanley William Hayter, brought printmaking into the 20th century. His use of innovative techniques and new materials took printmaking from its traditional function of reproduction and illustration into the realm of fine art.
Many famous artists including Pollock, Max Ernst, de Kooning, and Rothko, came through his studios in Paris and New York. His students included Lasansky and Shahn. It was he who printed Picasso’s illustrations for Buffon. An artist's artist, he was more interested in creating art than in self-promotion. As a result, he exhibited little of his own work.

Competitions

Links to PRINTS BIENNIALS - TRIENNIALS
ESTAMPE
CRACOW
KARA ART
Maryland Printmakers





JANUARY

DEADLINE : January 5, 2007
Call For Entries - 18 th National Drawing and Print Competitive Exhibition
Gormley Gallery, College of Notre Dame of Maryland
Entries due by 4 p.m. EST January 5, 2007

Open to all US Artists, drawings and prints (not photography) in any medium are eligible. $30 for up to 3 entries. Each artist may submit 35mm slides or CD. Exhibition March 19 to April 27, 2007. A minimum of $1500 will be available for purchase awards. Juror- Rena Hoisington , Associate Curator and Department Head of Prints, Drawings & Photographs, Baltimore Museum of Art.

For prospectus: www.ndm.edu/gormleygallery or SASE to:

National Drawing and Print Competitive Exhibition
Attn:Geoff Delanoy/Gormley Gallery
College of Notre Dame of Maryland
4701 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21210





FEBRUARY

Deadline: February 10, 2007

"Los Angeles Printmaking Society 19th National Exhibition" call for entries (Posted: 1/9/07) -- The Los Angeles Printmaking Society announces a call to artists for its 19th National Exhibition, held September 15 - October 28, 2007 at the Riverside Art Museum (Riverside, CA). Open to USA and Canadian printmakers. Original work in all printmaking media. LAPS will not consider traditional photography, off-set reproductions, or art originally produced in other media. Awards: $3,000 minimum, last national garnered over $5000 in awards. Juror: Archana Horsting, Executive Director of Kala Art Institute. Deadline: February 10, 2007. $30 for 3 slides or $35 for 5 slides. For more information visit http://LosAngelesPrintmakingSociety.com or send SASE to: LAPS 19th National, 3836 Mentone Ave #4, Culver City, CA 90232. Questions? Please contact Nancy Jo Haselbacher at nancy@indeliblepress.com or call (310) 633-0296.


MARCH

DEADLINE: March 9, 2007
Cascade Print Exchange
Include a 9"x 12" Self Addressed Stamped Envelope (postage of $3.00 with submission). Overseas only needs to include 9"x 12" Self Addressed Envelope 15 identical hand-pulled, original prints made for this exchange.
Paper not to Exceed 5"x 7" must be archival.
Please insert interleaving or glassine cover sheets between each print cut to paper size.
Each print must be signed and numbered and must be accompanied by the following information:
-Artists name
-title
-media
-email address or other contact info
This information can be printed separately and pasted to the back of each print.
Media: Intaglio, Relief, Lithography, Serigraph or any combinations of these for our records, 1 typed page with your name, address and email. A bio/resume is encouraged but not required.

Send entries to:
Cascade Print Exchange
Department of Art
Oregon State University
106 Fairbanks Hall
Corvallis, OR 97331-3702 USA
For questions concerning the exchange contact Print Professor: Yugi Hiratsuka yhiratsuka@oregonstate.edu
Exchange Coordinator: Erica Dorondo artdept.assistant@oregonstate.edu
Please RSVP by email to artdept.assistant@oregonstate.edu
Currently our website is under construction but you are welcome to check it out anyway at: www.cascadeprint.org
A Portfolio of 13 randomly selected prints will be mailed to each participant in late spring of 2007.


DEADLINE: March 10 2007
Biennale De L'estampe De Saint - Maur

Proximite et Horizons

Musee De Saint-Maur
Carre Medicis - 5, rue Saint-Hilaire
94210 La Varenne Saint-Hilaire
France

Contact person : Bernadette Boustany
Tel. 33 (0)1 48 86 33 28 - Fax 33 (0)1 48 83 49 12
E-mail: musee@mairie-saint-maur.com

Conditions of entry Participants should submit orginal engravings (black and white or colours, all traditional techniques of engraving, exept works produced on any computer). Each work of art submitted should illustrate the theme “Proximity and horizons”
Awards
First prize 2 300€
Second prize 1 900€
Third prize 1 600 €

Works
Each participant should dispatch or deposit 5 works. Maximum size of the work 56 x 76 cm. Reclaim of works: for artists not selected from 27th to 37th March, for artists selected from 18th to 22th September.

DEADLINE: March 15, 2007
Hand Pulled: Juried Mid Atlantic Print Show
Ellipse Arts Center Arlington Cultural Affairs
April 6 - May 26, 2007
Juror: Joan Boudreau, Curator, Graphic Arts Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 5, 6 - 9 p.m.
Juror's Talk: April 19, 7 - 9 p.m.

Hand Pulled is open to all printmakers who live or work in Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland or West Virginia. All original fine art print media will be considered. This may include intaglio, relief, lithography, screen printing, photogravure, collagraph, monoprint, photomechanical and digitally "manipulated" prints, non-conventional formats, dimensional prints and hand printed books. Prints may be unique as well as editioned work. All work must be "hand-pulled" in some way. Prints that are predominantly digitally printed will not be accepted. All work must be created in 2005 or later.
Drop off work to be juried: Wednesday, March 14, 11 - 7 p.m.
Pick up work not accepted: Friday, March 16, 11 - 7 p.m.
Pick up work accepted: Saturday, May 26, 2 - 5 p.m.
For more information and a printable 'call for entries' visit their web site at Arlington Arts


DEADLINE: March 15 2007
MINI PRINT INTERNATIONAL, CADAQUÉS
Open to all artists, printing techniques and tendencies, TALLER GALERIA FORT and ADOGI announce, as every year, the MINI PRINT INTERNATIONAL OF CADAQUÉS.


DEADLINE: March 30, 2007

INTERNATIONALE D’ART MUNIATURE
959, de l’Hotel-de-Ville
Saint-Jean-Chrystosome
Quebec, Canada, G6Z 2N8
www.artmini.com

pleloeuf@ville.levis.qc.ca

Contact person

Pauline Leboeuf

Conditions of entry

The exhibition is open to professional artists in the crafts and visual arts fields who produce original pieces, unique or of a limited number. All works must be for sale. A 30% commission will be kept by the organizer.

Awards

A total of 5 000 $ (CDN) will be awarded in prize money.

Works

Two dimensional artwork: the total surface area must not exceed 75 square cm (12 inches). The maximum size of the frame must not measure more that 100 cm (40 in) of perimeter

Three dimensional artwork: max 7,5x7,5x10 cm (3x3x4 in) or the equivalent of 560 cubic cm (36 in) including the stand of support.

Dates

Deadline for submissions March 30, 2007

Fees

An entry fee of $ 20 (CDN) is required for the first entry
15 $ (CDN) for the second entry

DEADLINE: March 31, 2007
5TH L E S S E D R A WORLD ART PRINT ANNUAL (MINI PRINT)
An international print annual with the premise that no art form has broader implications in contemporary society than that of the print. The aim is to gather and exhibit contemporary art print works from all over the world and to contribute to the contacts and the exchange between artists, art lovers and collectors and to stimulate the research into paper, inks, and other materials used in printmaking.
LESSEDRA Gallery & Contemporary Art Projects
25, Milin Kamak Street, Lozenetz
1164 Sofia, Bulgaria
Tel.(++359 2) 865 04 28, 866 38 57
www.lessedra.com
Email: georgi@lessedra.com



APRIL
DEADLINE: APRIL 2, 2007
The 14th Tallinn Print Triennial presents works of visual art that were produced using mechanical or digital reproduction or printing technologies, produced in 2004–2007 on the topic of Political and Poetical.

All correspondence concerning 14^th Tallinn Print Triennial should be sent to the address:

Mrs. Mare Pedanik
14th Tallinn Print Triennial
c/o Kumu Art Museum
Weizenbergi 34 / Valge 1
10127 Tallinn, ESTONIA

DEADLINE: April 15, 200(8)?
Iowa Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Miniature Prints
The Iowa Biennial Exhibition will exhibit an international survey of contemporary miniature prints to be held beginning August 2006. The purpose of the Iowa Biennial Exhibition is to both introduce the public to contemporary prints from around the world while enlarging the collection of works within the Iowa Biennial Exhibition research archives and making them available for academic research, museums, artists, and print students alike. While works within the research archives can never be sold, they will be used to promote a greater awareness of the uniqueness and beauty of the print and print mediums. Please note that submitted works will not be returned, but instead will become property of the Iowa Biennial Exhibition and part of the Iowa Biennial Exhibition research archives. The Iowa Biennial Exhibition will initially be exhibited at Kirkwood College and The University of Iowa and thereafter will become an international traveling exhibition for a period of up to two years.
Maximum of physical size of work [including substrate] in any dimension is three and a
half inches [3 1/2 inches or 9 cm]. This maximum size includes both image and border areas.
Works in all print media are eligible, including editioned, serial editioned, variable edtioned,
uneditioned, uneditionable, as well as digitally informed works. Do not send slides. Only original
prints, unframed and unmated, and created since 2004 (within the last two years) will be
accepted. Please submit no more than three [3] works.
Send all materials to:
THE IOWA BIENNIAL EXHIBITION
ATTN: 2006 CONTEMPORARY MINIATURE PRINTS
DEPARTMENT OF ART
KIRKWOOD COLLEGE
6301 KIRKWOOD BLVD. SW
CEDAR RAPIDS, IA 52404, U.S.A.


DEADLINE: April 30, 2008

The next BIMPE will take place in the summer of 2008. Entry forms will be available on this site from September/October of 2007.
BIMPE is a miniature print competition held every 2 years, and hosted by New Leaf Editions and Dundarave Print Workshop, both on Granville Island, Vancouver, Canada. The intent of BIMPE is to facilitate international artistic exchange and to increase public awareness and appreciation for printmaking.
Each artist may submit up to 3 prints, and up to 5 prints in each edition may be sent.
The entry fee is $30 CDN or $25 US
The prints can be in any printmaking medium
The printed area must not exceed 10 x 15 cm sq (in any dimensions)
The paper size must not exceed 8.5 x 10 inches (or it must fit in an A4 plastic sleeve)
All prints will be returned to artists after the show
All selected artists will receive a catalogue
A 3 person Jury will make the selection and choose 3 prize winners

Welcome to the website for the Biennial International Miniature Print Exhibition at www.bimpe.com!

BIMPE is a miniature print competition held every 2 years, and hosted by New Leaf Editions and Dundarave Print Workshop, both on Granville Island, Vancouver, Canada. The intent of BIMPE is to facilitate international artistic exchange and to increase public awareness and appreciation for printmaking.

Each artist may submit up to 3 prints, and up to 5 prints in each edition may be sent.
The entry fee is $30 CDN or $25 US
The prints can be in any printmaking medium
The printed area must not exceed 10 x 15 cm
The paper size must not exceed 8.5 x 10 inches (or it must fit in an A4 plastic sleeve)
The deadline for entries is April 30th 2006
New Leaf Editions
1370 Cartwright Street
Vancouver, BC
V6H 3R8
1-604-689-9918


MAY

DEADLINE: May 15th 2007

The Graphic Artist Association of Lahti and the Lahti Art Museum are pleased to invite the artists to participate in the 6th International Miniprint Finland 2007 miniature graphics triennial.

The Miniprint Finland miniature graphics triennial collects the best representatives in the field all around the world to the exhibition in the Lahti Art Museum from November 16th 2007 to February 3th 2008. President of Republic of Finland Tarja Halonen is patronizing the Miniprint exhibition. The Graphic Artist Association of Lahti has been responsible for arrangements from the start of the exhibition in 1992. The Lahti Art Museum has taken part in organizing since 1998.

The Miniprint Finland exhibition is exceptionally large and notable graphic arts presentation both nationally and internationally. It has established its position among the international miniature graphic special art exhibitions. Interest in this triennial is increasing after every event. About 800 artists from 61 countries sent nearly 2800 prints to the Miniprint Finland triennial 2004. The corresponding numbers in 1998 were 1700 prints from 478 artists from 52 countries.

<>DEADLINE: May 31, 2007
Washington Printmakers National Small Works 2007 - Prospectus
July 31 – August 26, 2007
Juror: Greg Jecmen, associate curator of Old Master Prints and print room supervisor at the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
RULES OF ENTRY
Eligibility
Open to any artist of 18 or over residing in the United States. All work submitted must be original prints, completed within the last two years, no photography.
Image size must be no larger than 170 square inches, maximum frame width 18”. All work must be archivally matted and should be framed under plexiglass in plain wood or metal frames. No glass or clip frames.
Fees
A non-returnable entry fee of $30.00 entitles artists to submit up to 4 slides. Make checks payable to Washington Printmakers Gallery.
Slides/Digital Images
Label each slide/digital image with artist’s name, title, medium, edition, and dimensions. Indicate top of slide.
Entry
Entry forms are also available on our website, www.washingtonprintmakers.com. Mail entry form, slides/digital imagres, check and self addressed stamped envelope SASE (for return of slides) to: Pauline Jakobsberg 11605 Milbern Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.
Contact information
Gail Vollrath, Gallery Director, Washington Printmakers Gallery,
1732 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20009. Telephone 202-332 7757, email wpg@visi.net


JUNE

DEADLINE: JUNE 30 2006
Stone Plate Grease Water
Call for submissions for international contemporary lithography show in Easter 2007. It will open at the Museum of Modern Art for Wales in Machynlleth from 12 Mar-12 May 2007 before touring UK & Ireland. Inclusion of prints by international artists will highlight how UK work relates to that of other countries. It is intended that between 70 and 100 works will be included to demonstrate diverse approaches, content and techniques. Selection will be from work submitted as slides or on CD. Successful artists will then be asked to submit prints from which final selections will be made. Prints may be of any scale and any techniques of stone, plate, photoplate, polyester plate or waterless lithography and multi-media. For details contact: Paul Croft, Aberystwyth School of Art, Buarth Mawr, Aberystwyth Ceredigion, Wales SY23 1NG, UK.
e-mail: puc@aber.ac.uk
Submission deadline: 30 Jun 2006


JULY

DEADLINE: July 22 2006
Seoul Space International Print Biennial
SPACE Group, Seoul Museum of Art
Date : September 7, 2006 ~ October 8, 2006
Place : Seoul Museum of Art

DEADLINE: July 16, 2006
The International Experimental Engraving Biennial is organize by The
Fine Artist's Union Timisoara, in collaboration with Timisoara City
Council and Banat Museum Timisoara.
Article1.
Like in the first edition, we promote and sustain the experiment in
engraving, new solutions and techniques of printmaking, dialogue with
the three-dimensional or recreate the investigate object with the
engraving support. Combined techniques, unconventional printing
materials like wood, plastic, silk, canvas, synthetic materials, etc,
the object like ready made with print surfaces on it, collage, computer
art or different others print interpretations, are encouraging.
Location: Banat Museum Timisoara.
Conditions: No fee is request. The theme is free. All print techniques
are accepted, including works made with the computer assistance (see
Article 1). New techniques are welcome. The works can be bi-dimensional
or three-dimensional. Each artist has the right to choose a free size
of his work (for tree dimensional art works). For bi-dimensional works
the minimum size is 20x20 cm(print size). Works with large size are
welcomes. Each artist can sent 1 work made after 2003.The work must be
signed and dated.
Deadline: July 16, 2006



AUGUST

DEADLINE: August 26, 2005
International Print Exhibition of Croquis Publishing House - 2005.
Croquis Publishing House invites printmakers, majority age, to participate of International Print Exhibition of Croquis Publishing House -2005. The exhibitions will take place at Casal de Catalunya- Chacabuco 863-Buenos Aires-Argentina.
For further information, please contact:
Editorial y Galerías Croquis
Teléfono: 4464-1075

SEPTEMBER

DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 15, 2006
IMPRIMO: Seattle Print Arts Juried Exhibition 2006, open to all current members of Seattle Print Arts (you can join at time of entry). Exhibition dates are November 1 - December 2, 2006 at Gallery 110 in Seattle, WA. Information can be found by copying and pasting in this .pdf address into your browser: http://www.seattleprintarts.org/pdfs/IMPRIMO1.pdf


DEADLINE-September 25, 2006
New Prints 2007/Winter
International Print Center New York announces a call for entries for New Prints 2007/Winter opening in our Chelsea space in January, 2007. We are requesting submissions of newly created fine art prints.The New Prints 2007/Winter Selections Committee will be: Amy Cutler, artist; Luther Davis, Master Printer, Axelle Fine Arts; Paul Laster, Editor, ArtKrush; Mary Ellen Oldenburg, art historian and collector; Robert Rainwater, Independant Curator; Mary Ryan, Director, Mary Ryan Gallery.



OCTOBER

DEADLINE: OCTOBER 15, 2006

ACQUI PRIZE
VIII INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL OF ENGRAVING 2007
Art.1
The VIIIth. Edition of Premio Acqui is organised by the International Biannual Association for Engraving and is supported by the Rotary Club of Acqui Terme, the Region of Piedmont, the Acqui Terme Council and the Fondazione CRT.
Art.2
The Biennial Exhibition is open to any engraver and entry into the competition is free.
Each artist should send only one work completed after January 1st 2005 in chalcography or xylography (Any work that has been produced in part by a different technique will not be accepted)The works must not have been used for commercial printing or placed in any other exhibition or public event before. The maximum size of entries is 50cm x 70cm. The works can’t be in a frame or in a passé-partout.
Art.3
Each artist should send one copy of his/her work and a photograph or a laser photocopy of his/her work (18x24 cm size) with the title of the work, the technique and the year of completion written on the reverse side.
In addition the artist must attach the entry form ( at the bottom ) ; this can be downloaded from www.acquiprint.it
The entry, the copy and the entry form should be sent to:
PREMIO ACQUI Biennale Europea per l'incisione
C/o Assessorato alla Cultura - Palazzo Robellini
Piazzetta Levi n.1 - 15011 Acqui Terme ( AL ) Italia
Works must be sent on or before October 31st 2006; the works sent after this date will not be accepted.

Deadline: OCTOBER 18, 2007
2008 Pacific States Biennial National Print Exhibition


Deadline: October 31, 2006
Ink and Clay 33
An annual competition, established in 1971, of prints and drawings; ceramic ware and clay sculpture sponsored by the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. The primary underwriting is through the generosity of Col. Jim Jones. Ink and Clay is an exhibition open to all of the Western States including AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, ND, SD, NM, NV, OK, OR, SD, TX, UT, WA,WY. A virtual catalog will be published and mounted on the gallery’s website. The catalog will be available for download.Each artist will be given a page for their image and text (statement, bio, resume, contact information).
A $20 entry and handling fee will be charged. This entitles the artist to three entries. 3-D work may have one detail slide each. Please make check or money order payable to Ink and Clay 32. All artists must submit slides for juroring. Slides must be received by October 31, 2006. Slide labels must include artist's name, title, medium, dimensions and telephone number. Mail slides, SASE, entry form and fee to Kellogg Art Gallery, California State Polytechnic University, 3801 W. Temple Ave. Pomona CA, 91768. Slides of all accepted work will be retained for documentation and for preparation of the website and virtual catalog. accepted works.

NOVEMBER

Deadline Nov 4, 2005
NATIONAL PRINTMAKING ‘06
January 18 - February 15, 2006
Opening reception: January 18, 5 to 7 p.m.

NATIONAL PRINTMAKING ‘06
Deadline Nov 4, 2005
January 18 - February 15, 2006
Opening reception: January 18, 5 to 7 p.m.
A biennial exhibition with National Drawing Exhibitions being held alternate years. Slides are submitted for the jury process and accepted works are sent for a second round of examination. Up to $3,000 in purchase awards offered. For a prospectus, either download from this site or send a SASE to National Printmaking ‘02, The College of New Jersey, Department of Art, PO Box 7718, Ewing, NJ 08628-0718
http://www.arts.ri.gov/blogs/index.php/?p=363


DECEMBER

Deadline: December 2, 2005

The Lower East Side Printshop invites emerging artists of all disciplines and cultural backgrounds to apply for the Special Editions Fellowship Program 2006. No previous printmaking experience is necessary. Awarded artists will create printmaking projects in collaborative residencies that will take place between February 2006 and February 2007. Each artist will have 8-12 day-long working sessions with a master printer to develop and complete a new body of work. The Printshop will provide materials, tools and equipment, full studio access, technical assistance and an artist honorarium of $1,500. Applications must be postmarked or hand-delivered by December 2, 2005.Application available at http://printshop.org, or send a self addressed stamped envelope to Lower East Side Printshop, 306 W.37th Street, New York, NY 10018.
The Lower East Side Printshop advances and promotes the art of printmaking and supports emerging artists.
Please click the following link for more information:http://www.printshop.org/web/Create/SpecialEditions/index.html

DEADLINE: DECEMBER 15, 2005
INTERNATIONAL MINI PRINT de SARAJEVO 2005 / 06
Open to all artists, in all printing techniques and tendencies
Each artist should submit 4 prints in order to be included in the
art show. It is preferable though not necessary that the works be of
different images.The image on the plate, stone or screen must not be
bigger than 10 x 10c/m.The paper or support must not be bigger than 18
x 18 c/m.
The signed works should be sent by registered air-mail as PRINTED
MATTER in a simple packet, without glass, frame or matte, declaring "NO
COMMERCIAL VALUE", to:
EURO ART CENTER, Skiftesv.14, 352 53 Växjö, Sweden, before 15th,
December 2005.
A "Curriculum Vitae" should accompany the works, including name and
nationality of the artist as well as the title, technique and price of
works in Euro
A Jury will select the works to be exhibited, the name of the
accepted artists will be published in our website www.euroartcentre.com
during the month of January, 2006.
The exhibition period of the INTERNATIONAL MINI PRINT de SARAJEVO,
will be increased from February 23th, 2006 to Martch 23th. 2006
CLICK TO PARTICIPATE in INTERNATIONAL MINI PRINT de SARAJEVO 2006
http://www.euroartcentre.com/m ps/entry.htm

DEADLINE: December 15, 2006
Call for Art: Maine Prints Since 1985
A Exhibition opportunity from The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, for Artists specializing in:
Visual Arts/Crafts - Printmaking
The Center for Maine Contemporary Art will present Maine Prints Since 1985, an exhibition selected by invitation and from submissions in response to a statewide call to artists, in the Main and Loft Galleries from October 21 to December 15, 2006. To keep both focus of the project and exhibition space manageable, works will be limited to intaglio, relief, and planographic processes. (It is assumed that one of a kind prints and computer/digitized prints will be featured in other venues.) Participants must have a verifiable presence in Maine, but works printed/published beyond Maine will be considered.
Contemporary Printmaking Exhibition
Celebrate our 14th Anniversary with us!
FALL GALLERY NIGHT
Live Jazz by Keith Watling and Friends
" Anniversary Special" All artists invited to enter one piece for $14! Size limit 20 inches. Exhibit Gallery Night and Day! Call 414-643-1732 to enter! or Contact Gallery

DEADLINE: December 31, 2005
2nd Annual National Drawing, Painting and Printmaking Competition The Palm Beach Community College in Lake Worth, FL invites artists to submit their best drawings, paintings and prints for the second annual art competition hosted by the college. Guest juror Barry Sparkman from the University of Miami will distribute artist awards totaling $2000. Slide entries are due January 9th 2006. Accepted entries are due by 5pm on February 13, 2006. The show will run from February 24th -April 17th, 2006, with an opening reception to be held in our gallery (Humanities Building, room 104) on Friday, February 24th from 6-8pm. This show is open to all artists ages 18 and over working in any media traditionally associated with drawing, painting and printmaking. Sorry, no digitally produced work will be accepted. Maximum size is 52" in any direction. There is a small entry fee of $10 per slide (4 slides max) to cover show costs. All proceeds generated from the show will benefit student art scholarships at PBCC. For a full prospectus, please send an SASE to: Gallery Manager, Palm Beach Community College, Division of Humanities MS 15, 4200 Congress Av, Lake Worth FL 33461

Exhibits

Exhibits: Cello Links

Artists

Leonard Baskin
Leonard Baskin is widely considered one of the preeminent figures of 20th century American Art. Creatively active for over five decades as a sculptor, printmaker, painter, illustrator, critic, book publisher, and educator, Baskin represents a consistent, powerful, and important voice for humankind both visually and intellectually. The art of Leonard Baskin has received many awards and honors. Baskin's work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Nation Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Seattle Art Museum, and the Vatican Museum. Davidson Galleries maintains a large and varied inventory of works by Baskin, including prints, paintings and sculpture dating from the 1950's to the 1990's.


Lucien Freud
Grandson of famous psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, Lucian was Berlin in 1922. The Jewish Freud family left Germany in the 1930s and moved to London in order to escape the looming presence of the Nazis. After a brief service in the Navy, Freud became an artist and studied under Cedric Morris. Another strong influence in his artwork was Ingres, as Freud used to copy the works of the painter. Lucians early work contained Surrealist elements, however his later works tended to favor a more realistic approach to nude portraits.



Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith's art, ranging over a diverse array of creative (often craft-oriented) media and continuously shifting between the conceptual and literal, formal and idiomatic, scientific and spiritual, political and personal, as well as clinically precise and abstractly metaphorical in her attitudes and expressions, has remained dedicated throughout the eighties and into this decade to an unßinching, tireless, and obsessively demanding investigation of a singular yet vast territory of human experience: the body. At times a forum for the mystical, the metaphysical, the psychological, the personally introspective, and the broadly multi-interpretational, it at other times suggests an ideological and aesthetic arena, or battlefield, of conßicting social, political, and cultural agendas. Shamanist, rationalist, psychologist, biologist, anatomist, humanist, activist, critic, and connoisseur, Smith has far from neared any consolidation, conformity, completion, repetition, or depletion in her description and discourse of the meta-body. Quite to the contrary in fact, Smith continues to provide even greater definition and expansive resonance to the individual and collective implications inherent in her subject. As society is increasingly forced to finally face those ultimately inescapable issues of health, gender, sexuality, and self that she's been tackling all along, the art world has come to understand more deeply, and embrace more completely, the particular enigma, esthesia, and ecstasy of Smith's art.



Chloe Piene
Chloe Piene is known for her intense and powerful work. Since the late 1990s she has been making charcoal drawings of naked figures on paper and vellum, based on images of herself, other people, and, occasionally, animals.
Chloe Piene is part of a generation of young artists investigating new representations of radical otherness. Instead of emphasizing a familiar, modern loss of the self, Piene provokes the viewer to cut loose from any possible illusionary state of mind. In this way, she succeeds in a subtle engagement in the plight of both victim and hero, viewer and protagonist.



Jenny Saville
In a society often obsessed with physical appearance, Jenny Saville has created a niche for overweight women in contemporary visual culture. Known primarily for her large-scale paintings of obese women, Saville has recently broken into the contemporary art world with the help of gallery owner and art collector Charles Saatchi. Rising quickly to great critical and public recognition in part through Saatchi’s patronage, Saville has been heralded for creating conceptual art through the use of a classical standard -- the figure painting.



Elizabeth Peyton
Her work is characterized by elongated, slender figures with androgynous features which at times resemble fashion illustration. Her work is most often executed in oil paint, applied with washy glazes that are sometimes allowed or encouraged to drip. Several other works in color pencil have also found notoriety and recent work has included etchings. The idealization and stylization of known celebrities has led some critics to characterize her work as derivative of or in the tradition of Andy Warhol with a Romantic overtone. The artist has cited influence by David Hockney.



Zak Smith
Zak Smith's stylized portraits and acidic abstractions intimately capture stillness in an ever-encroaching world. His works demonstrates and deconstructed neo-punk aesthetic conversant in comic book-style drawing, vivid psychedelic coloration, experimental photographic processes, and traditional draftsmanship. Using his friends and his immediate environment as subjects, Smith renders scenes of youthful ambivalence amid a surplus of surrounding diversions and possessions.


Marlene Dumas
Often described as an 'intellectual expressionist', Marlene Dumas blurs the boundaries between painting and drawing. Bold lines and shapes mix seamlessly with ephemeral washes and thick gestural brushwork. By simplifying and distorting her subjects, Marlene Dumas creates intimacy through alienation. Her subjects' assertive stares suggest that her paintings aren't actually about them, but the viewer's own reaction to their perverse circumstance. With deceptive casualness, Marlene Dumas exposes the monstrous capacity belied by 'civilised' human nature.



Wangechi Mutu
Mutu’s figures are equally repulsive and attractive. From corruption and violence, Mutu creates a glamorous beauty. Her figures are empowered by their survivalist adaptation to atrocity, immunised and ‘improved’ by horror and victimisation. Their exaggerated features are appropriated from lifestyle magazines and constructed from festive materials such as fairy dust and fun fur. Mutu uses materials which refer to African identity and political strife: dazzling black glitter symbolises western desire which simultaneously alludes to the illegal diamond trade and its terrible consequences. Her work embodies a notion of identity crisis, where origin and ownership of cultural signifiers becomes an unsettling and dubious terrain.


Kara Walker
Walker has been making enormous, even room-sized, installations using the silhouette format in cut paper for several years now. The silhouette, popular in the 19th and 18th century as women’s art, is employed today as a narrative device by Kara Walker to give a jolt of graphic recognition to a subject matter which would often be too gruesome to tell in any other format. By distilling the images to stark black, gray and white silhouettes, Walker lulls her viewers into the murky waters of the history of African-Americans on this continent before the full scope of her subject matter is realized. Once in that swamp there is no turning back and Walker navigates with an assured hand and an ability to remain buoyant in the face of all adversity.



Amy Cutler
In her finely crafted, highly detailed drawings, Amy Cutler creates surrealistic worlds where girls roost in trees like birds and women have tea kettles for heads. Floating in the midst of crisp, white paper, Cutler's scenes resemble children's illustrations that hark back to the Brothers Grimm. While these drawings are not meant to be literal translations of stories, they do speak to the tradition of storytelling that forms a part of childhood. In exploring these ideas Cutler has developed her own personal symbolism and her fantasies unfold with a recklessness that is both easy and inscrutable.


Marcel Dzama
His delicate line drawings are filled in with a subtle palette of reds, greys and pale browns the latter made from concentrated root beer used like paint. At first they seem like pages from an Art Deco childrens book until the very (post)modern violence in the images begins to make itself known. There is nothing twee here. The Canadian artist explains nothing in his work. There is no clear narrative though often characters resurface and repeat themselves or die off throughout the prolific images. We repeatedly notice people dressed in tree costumes; large bears; little girls with scout-like uniforms and guns. Together the work tells some obtuse tale of war, revolution and reprisal. Like a fairy-tale Goya.



Ernesto Caivano
Caivano supplies a C.S. Lewis-like narrative, paralleling the visual text. It goes something like this: In a distant, heavily wooded dimension, lovers are separated for a thousand years. As the centuries pass each slowly realizes different potentials of the mind and spirit: he becomes a knight, intimately in tune with the natural world. She becomes a spaceship—reason and its achievements incarnate. These two halves of a neo-Platonic world soul communicate through birds known as philapores, which Caivano says means “love of pores.” He also remarks they cannot fly but are able to pass through dense matter. Inscribed on their feathers is critical information and coding, which passes between the lovers with much difficulty and effort. The salvation of the natural and spiritual environment is at stake.

This parable can be read as a somewhat geek-ish fantasy, but it also seems to describe the branching bifurcations of an artist’s life and work: why and how the art means—and how it may transform the self. Caivano follows a current trend in which visual artists use some kind of backstory in conjunction with paintings or drawings. But with this artist, transitions between the two different types of information are especially complex and intense, re-enacting the lovers’ yearning. Ultimately, Caivano’s remarkable achievement is to evoke and sustain imaginative, cognitive, and emotional infinities.

Min Kim
The finely made paint-and-ink work of the Korean-born artist Min Kim amounts to a kind of child's vision of Eden. Ms. Kim's formal skill and ingenuity, particularly in her use of cut paper, are impressive: precise, economical, but with imaginative flourishes. Her application of cartoon-style sweetness to an adult-style morality tale is a device common in art of the moment, and can easily produce results that are arch, sappy or slight. She makes it work through an illusion of ingenuousness, by presenting a condition of innocence more or less straight: threatened from without, unblemished from within; that's all.

Reviews

From roberta fallon and libby rosof's artblog

Written by libby rosof
Old medium, new looks

Before this show blows right out of town, I wanted to get something up about the Print Center's "79th Annual International Competition: Printmaking." It's one of those shows that challenges any assumptions about prints as a weak medium, often falling prey to deadly process and control and old hat imagery. Well, at least I confess I sometimes feel this way about printmaking--but not after seeing this exhibit (below, Briana Clark's screenprint "Little Red Ridinghood," 10 1/2 x 11 inches).

Brianna Clark

This show's a gem, with lots of provocative work from lots of artists I never heard of as well as some artists I have. Forty pieces by 35 different artists are included in the show, which was curated by Judith B. Hecker, the assistant curator in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at MoMA. Only one print in the show was entirely digital. The others relied mostly on traditional means of production (Below, Jacques Moiroud's etching "Sweet & Sour," 24 x 18 inches, New York, which won an award).

Jacques Moiroud

Familiar names in the show include three local artists--Kip Deeds and artblog favorite Jeanne Jaffe, both of whom won awards, as well as Althea Murphy-Price, who recently had a terrific piece in the Voxennial (see post here). Deeds' piece was purchased for the Print Center Permanent Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, selected by John Ittmann, curator of prints there. The name of the award was the Anne Kane Museum Purchase Award for his screen print, "By Gone Attachements" (screenprint, 11 x 15 inches; Deeds is from Newtown, PA, and Roberta has written about him here).

Kip Deeds

Although the means were traditional, the subject matter was right up to date, the imagery and styles chosen by artists with eyes wide open. There are wacky angles suggested by camera imagery and the movies; there's cartooning; there are metaphorical narrations and metaphorical abstractions and metaphorical portraits; there's a lot about how people relate to one another and about where people fit in the world at large. There are references to art history and the imagery of advertising that surrounds us daily (below, Murphy-Price's "Up Do Series No. 1" is a similar idea to her dramatic "Sunday Crown" sculpture, but the print's curly hair lines are delicate and gestural. Murphy-Price is an artist to watch).

Althea Murphy-Price

While some images seem to hark back to the 1940s, even those retain postmodern touches that make them look fresh (below, Daniel Brewer's woodcut "Empty Shirt," which captures a person cramped by the corporate life in the cartoony lines of the cramped clothing).

brewer, daniel

I cannot possibly begin to name each artist whose work I admired, because I liked nearly every one of the images. So I've put up a few images and just want to urge you to go to this show.

Also at the Print Center is a show of prints by Elizabeth Osborne. While I found this work less surprising, it has some fine moments, such as the view of a lake taken under different conditions. The contrast between the two is a reminder of what Osborne's work is about (top image, "Lake," and bottom, "Calm Water").

Elizabeth Osborne,
The other great moment, for me, was a view of Osborne's studio with a river beyond, the river becoming a metaphor for life passing by as the artist works, and also a metaphor for how art gives only a slice of what's out there (below, "River Studio")






The Garden of Earthly Delights
Irish Arts Review (Dublin, Ireland)

By GERRY WALKER
When Hieronymous Bosch created his vision of The Garden of Earthly Delights c.1500, he sought to depict a world in resolute pursuit of sinful pleasures. The triptych charts the history of creation and the pervasiveness of sin. It is a cautionary tale in a surreal setting, calculated to induce an awareness of the drastic consequences of worldly indulgence and the urgent necessity for repentance -- a grand narrative whose tone is zealous and didactic both in intent and effect. Happily the current exhibition by Graphic Studio artists, also called The Garden of Earthly Delights, at the Chester Beatty Library, is a lot more life-affirmative and a lot less life-prescriptive.
Historically we are familiar with the idea of the garden as a metaphor. The physical will-to-form not only reflects our ability to subdue, shape and cultivate the natural world, it also demonstrates and enables the desire to contemplate a spiritual inner space. Hence Japanese and Chinese gardens are noted for restraint, Islamic gardens espouse symmetry and Christians attempted to celebrate romantically the Creation itself. In all instances, aside from physicality, the true spaces created were interior, contemplative and philosophical.
This is the context in which the Graphic Studio formulated a brief for its members and invited guests to each produce a limited edition print using traditional printmaking techniques in response to garden spaces and related imagery as they are represented throughout the collection of the Chester Beatty Library. Each participating artist was encouraged to use the collection as a resource and point of inspiration in the creation of their own Garden of Earthly Delights.
Initiated by the Graphic Studio, the show is a collaborative project with the Chester Beatty library. It follows on from another successful venture with the library the Holy Show in 2002 in which artists were invited to give a visual response to biblical texts using sources and references from part of the considerable print collection held in the library. A similar successful joint venture with the National Gallery entitled Art/Art in 1998 was based on responses to the gallery collection. In all cases there was a desire on the part of the Graphic Studio not only to initiate a dialogue between the old and the new and to unite a disparate group of artists behind a common theme, but also there was a recognition of the need to foster collaboration with other significant cultural institutions. The effects are, one feels, inevitably mutually beneficial. The dialogue between old and new, results in renewed interrogation of the value of national collections. It reinvigorates and reinforms the imperatives of curatorship itself and it creates a wholly new stream of work with the process of each engagement.
These collaborations are indicative of an inherent dynamism within both participating institutions. The Chester Beatty library has a substantial European print collection numbering . over 35,000 items. This is the largest collection of Old Master prints in Ireland. Chronologically the collection extends from the 15th century with early woodcuts to the 1960s and it includes some works from the Graphic Studio which Beatty purchased when he lived in Ireland. The library also has a policy of constantly evaluating and re-presenting its collection along with promoting greater accessibility in an innovative manner. This was evidenced recently in Irish writer Colm Toibin's curatorship of selected blue artefacts from the collection.
Within this sympathetic ambience thirty-nine artists, have attempted to pursue a common theme of the garden as earthly paradise, refuge or place of spiritual solace. These include Brian Bourke, Hughie O'Donoghue, Mick Cullen, William Crozier (Fig 6) and Gwen O'Dowd (Fig 3), all of whom enjoy the status of visiting artists in the studio. Inevitably some have chosen to interpret the original brief very liberally, others prefer a more literal approach and more work through the constraints of illustration, opting for somewhat literary and anecdotal interpretations. A good deal of the work created reflects highly individualised stylistic concerns.
Brian Bourke's etching entitled Leopold Bloom's Earthly Delights is uncharacteristically nostalgic (Fig 7). Rendered in his essential pared-down drawing style it refers to a music hall song going through Bloom's mind. The image is based on an old photograph taken in 1915 of Bourke's mother and her sisters disporting themselves on the beach at Bray. Hughie O'Donoghue's carborundum print reveals a characteristic dark brooding landscape portentous and hinting of menace. Entitled Where is your Garden? it is more evocative of an interior space, and suggests a place of sombre introspection unencumbered by extraneous colour (Fig 9). In contrast Mick Cullen's customary exuberance shines through in his submission which he calls Bongo jungle. Colourful, gestural and bordering on the chaotic the image advances and recedes, conceals and reveals at the same time (Fig 5). Dimensions are vague and movement is constant in this garden. Space is undefined. Sensuality is all.
Among the studio artists themselves one senses a more specific engagement with the terms of the overall brief. The originators of the project, Jean Bardon, Grainne Cuffe and Cliona Doyle have each demonstrated their predelictions without ambiguity. Preferring to approach the subject directly, their strengths are underpinned by masterful technique.
Jean Bardon's etching reflects her interest in the Asiatic handscrolls bordered with silk brocade which form part of the Beatty collection (Fig 10). Entitled Flora Japonica the work depicts flowers which have symbolic significance or associations with different times of the year. Plum blossom is associated with winter in Asia and Chrysanthemum refers to longevity. It is a subtle exercise in control and delicacy.
Grainne Cuffe has opted to select types of flowers which best suit her formal pictorial requirements. Her etching, which depicts Bells of Ireland, Seeds and Lillies, expresses her fascination with purely formal complexities (Fig 4). The seeds are convex tetrahedrons. The Bells which stretch across the picture plane evoke a DNA helix -- another reference to structure and the lillies exist in a space that allows for quiet appreciation of their moment of perfection.
Cliona Doyle displays comparable formal concerns in her depiction of a Black Headed Conure. She has produced an arresting image of a parrot sitting on an apple bough (Fig 1). Her composition is bold and assured, using negative space to good effect. She achieves a depth of colour and texture which is remarkable for an etching. It is one of the most tactile prints in the show.
Chinese scroll paintings provided the stimulus for Janet Pierce's aquatint. Gerwhali Raga is an evocation of a landscape remembered from a trip to the foothills of the Himalayas (Fig 8). It is a tranquil compelling study in blue melodic recollection -romantic in the true sense of the term.
Ruth O'Donnell found her inspiration in the pages of a late medieval French book of hours. The title of the etching, Vignette suggests a pun on the practice of enclosing small manuscript imagery in a clecorative border of vines. The depiction is of a couple sharing a meal (Fig 2). The alfresco connotations are of garden tables, summer and childhood happiness.
These images best exemplify the unity within diversity which characterises the overall studio engagement with the library artefacts. They are strongly traditional in their execution and taken together they constitute a unique and substantial body of work. It is also most encouraging to note that there is no such thing as a house style within the Graphic Studio. Individuality prevails and one is left with the sense that a healthy internal dynamic exists which is further sustained and developed by external encounters.
This is plainly evidenced in the work of James McCreary. His distinctive mezzotint entitled A Visit by a Japanese Emperor is a gentle essay on whimsy. He obviously subscribes to the view that butterflies are harbingers of pleasure, joy and hope -- a welcome visitor to any garden. McCreary's confidence and formal acuity, particularly in spatial arrangement are grounded in his early experience of working at the Harry Clarke studio in the 1960s and his long time interest in Japan. Both of these great institutions have been enriched by this endeavour.
The Chester Beatty library showcases the artistic treasures of the major civilisations and religions of the world. The global collection of manuscripts, prints, miniatures, icons and early printed books is a rich national resource. By encouraging interactions such as the Gardens of Earthly Delights, thereby allowing for constant reappraisal of the concepts of museums, collections and curatorship itself, artefacts are redefined yet again, revivication is achieved and contemporary relevance is sustained. For the Graphic Studio the benefits are equally significant. Encounters with historical works reinform traditional values and techniques -- something the studio espouses. This leads to a widening of perspectives, a positive fusion of the past and the present and an increase in incremental learning for all involved. Since its establishment in 1961 the studio has provided facilities annually for etching, woodblock, lithography and carborudum printing for its members and sundry visiting artists. It is the oldest and largest fine art print studio in Ireland. Based in Dublin's docklands, it is a charitable, educational organisation and in other cultural jurisdictions it would be regarded as a national treasure. Now it faces uncertainty about its future given the pressures for redevelopment in the docklands area. Relocation may be an inevitability. Not unnaturally this causes concerns and deflects energy away from the proper concerns of the studio -- the maintenance of standards of excellence for which it has become famous. Prints from the exhibition are on sale from the Chester Beatty Library bookshop as are handmade box portfolios containing a single print from each of the thirty-nine artists.