aether special edition 2014 by Aether Magazine

aether a visual arts dialogue

AUSTIN special edition 2014

ae Collaborators EDITORS Rachel Stephens Partner • Wally Workman Gallery Judith Taylor Director/ Owner • Gallery Shoal Creek

CONTRIBUTORS Claiborne Smith is the Editor in Chief at Kirkus Reviews and the former literary director of the Texas Book Festival. Jeffery Dell is a Professor of Studio Art: Printmaking at Texas State University. Tina Weitz, photographer, is Owner of Photo Méthode Gallery. Erin Keever is a visual arts writer living in Austin, Texas. She teaches Art History at Austin Community College and is currently developing online curriculum in Art History. Kathrine Brimberry, master printer, is the Owner and Director of Flatbed Press and Galleries. Catherine Zinser is the Manager of Exhibitions at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds an MA in Art History and is an admirer of all things paper. Julia V. Hendrickson is a writer, editor, and curator. She holds an MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art as well as a BA in Studio Art & English from the College of Wooster. Currently, she lives in Chicago and works as the Registrar and Publications Editor at the gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey. Kristin Holder is the Print Room Specialist at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds an MFA in Painting. Laura Harrison is Assistant Director of Gallery Shoal Creek.

Copyright © 2014 by AETHER. All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, without the express written permission of the publisher, is prohibited. aether, special edition 2014 • contact@aetherart.com • www.aetherart.com Sabra Booth, Slick, Artist Book, Rubber (Oil Pipe Gaskets) and cable ties with relief and silkscreen COVER: Photograph of the American French Tool Intaglio Press at Flatbed, Tina Weitz Photography

aether

aether Low level chatter has been heard for years. The art community should promote PRINTMAKING. It is one of our strengths. This past summer the chatter increased, the volume escalated. The art community began coming together to talk seriously about creating a print event. Then, Elvia Perrin, printmaker and educator, and Cathy Savage, printmaker, stepped forward to take the reins. With the support of Women Printmakers of Austin, they co-founded PrintAustin 2014 and set out to make a major print event a reality. Perrin and Savage provided what had always been missing – leadership. In support of PrintAustin 2014, aether magazine has created this special issue on PRINTMAKING – a look at those who create, educate, and collect. Kristin Holder opens the door to what she calls an enduring repository, the Blanton Museum of Art's extensive print collection, while Clay Smith provides a historical perspective for Gus Kopriva's focused collection of German prints. Two influential printers – Katherine Brimberry/Owner of Flatbed Press and Jeffery Dell/Professor of Studio Art at Texas State University – discuss the role their workshops play in educating and nurturing young printmakers. Articles by Erin Keever, Catherine Zinser and Julia Hendrickson showcase artists whose creative expression embraces printmaking. Ranging from emerging talent to internationally recognized masters, they exemplify, in Elvia Perrin's words, the possibilities of print and the relevancy of printmaking in contemporary visual arts. We hope you, our readers, will join in as Austin celebrates PRINTMAKING, January 15 through February 15!

-The Editors

Mary Fischer, Cotton Gin, Clay image printed from solar etching plate; 12"x11.5"x4"

Contents 6

AN ENDURING RESPOSITORY /

26 IN PURSUIT OF CULTURAL IDENTITY /

A BETTER VICE /

32 THE CONTEMPORARY PRINT /

INTERNATIONAL PRINTMAKERS /

Crossing Boundaries and Making Connections

38 ARTICULATING IDEAS / Printmaking at Texas State University

STAGING THE LANDSCAPE /

44 INTO THE JUNGLE / Jules Buck Jones

Blanton Print Room

German Art from the Kaiser to Hitler

The Sculptural Work of Jason Urban

The work of Polk, Mersky and Gratovich

Juried Exhibition of Texas Printmakers

48 DATEBOOK / Recommended PrintAustin exhibitions

aether

Julia Matthews Wilkinson Center for Prints a Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas,

AN ENDURING RESPOSITORY OF

CULTURE, BEAUTY, INNOVATION, AND by KRISTIN HOLDER

Before I joined the Blanton Museum of Art staff as Print Room Specialist, I visited the museum to familiarize myself with the facilities and surrounding environment. With its location at the intersection of Congress Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the museum serves as a gateway between a vibrant city and an exhilarating and innovative university. During that visit, surrounded by the tree-filled courtyard and cool marble colonnades, I could feel its vitality and energy, and I could also sense that it was a place for scholarship and quiet reflection. The H-E-B Study Room is found within the Julia Matthews Wilkinson Center for Prints and Drawings at the Blanton. Dr. Francesca Consagra is the senior curator of prints and drawings, and European paintings, and she oversees three fulltime employees that serve the public through the research, care, and presentation of almost 16,000 works of art on paper. The department assists a wide range of people with different interests: the UT community, as well as other local universities, K-12 schools, art aficionados, curators, collectors, connoisseurs, and artists. It is one of the most visited study rooms in the country with almost 2,000 visitors per year. Anyone can make an appointment to study, discuss, and enjoy prints and drawings that are not currently on display in the museum. In the study room, visitors not only have the intimate experience of seeing unframed art up close, but they can experience pairings and juxtapositions of works not feasible in the galleries. image: Burgoyne Diller, Untitled #78, circa 1950, pen and ink and pencil, 7 7/8 x 2 5/16 inches, Blanton Museum of Art, Gift of Kenneth and Emma-Stina Prescott

and Drawings Austin

D PHILOSOPHY I have seen art speaking to people. A nursing class visited last semester where I pulled work by Feliciano Centurión, an Argentine artist who died of AIDS in 1996, and another work by Eric Avery, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch who counsels patients with the disease. The students had spent the majority of the semester in the classroom, and this visit was an opportunity for them to make a deeper, empathetic connection with individuals living with the disease, in the past and the present. For example, the works by Centurión evolved from the time that he discovered he had the disease until his death. The anger he expressed early on changed to acceptance and a sense of his coming to terms with the end of his life. Yet the art stays with us. What art gives the students then is a way to talk about the emotional and spiritual aspects of people suffering from this disease, how they cope with it, and ultimately, in Centurión’s case, how he overcame it. Almost nine hundred people visited the H-E-B Study Room during the fall semester. Those who visited were local school children, retirees, and accomplished scholars from the US and abroad. There were classes with only five students, and even large-scale lectures with sections that brought in

over two hundred students in total. In these visits, the works of Rembrandt, Lucas Cranach, Käthe Kollwitz, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Josef Albers, Ana Mendieta, and Luis Camnitzer have stood out as particularly strong examples of excellent teaching tools for their ability to signify technique, media and social relevance. Since I started working with the Blanton’s extensive collection of prints and drawings, the continuity of these media from the Renaissance to the presentday has become increasingly clear. These practices have evolved with innovations in technology throughout history. Yet, I have started to see an inherent dialogue between works that are separated by space and time. One might even consider how the development of printmaking, valued for its indexicality and its ability to be endlessly copied, relates to today’s culture. Social media outlets like Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram are vehicles for individuals to offer their own ideas to a wide audience on a seemingly unlimited scale. What the Wilkinson Center for Prints and Drawings offers—that these recent technologies do not— is an enduring material repository of culture, beauty, technical innovation, and philosophy for all of us to benefit from.

aether

LOOKING FORWARD: Building on Fifty Years of Collecting A recent interview with Francesca Consagra, Senior Curator, Prints and Drawings and European Paintings, gives further insight into the extensive holdings of the Wilkinson Center for Prints and Drawings and the curator's vision for the future.

collection of European art on paper predates 1800. Over 700 artists represent the Latin American collection, which is eleven percent of our works on paper, the majority of these dating after 1963. The American works on paper comprise about 25 percent of the collection and it has excellent Kristin Holder: How does the Blanton’s print examples of prints made by artists active during collection compare to other major US collections the time of the Works Progress Administration in size and scope? (WPA), including Clare Veronica Leighton, as well as modern and contemporary artists. Francesca Consagra: In Texas and the Southwest, we have the largest collection of European prints The museum is presently in the process of and drawings made before 1800. And the Blanton developing collecting strategies for the future and boasts one of the highest attendance figures of any building its acquisition funds. Because of the university art museum, with 158,000 visitors last vibrant printmaking culture in Austin, I would like year. We serve the needs of both a vital research to deepen and expand our areas of collecting so that university and a fast-growing capitol city. These we can teach the history of prints better and help audiences also influence the way that we approach our diverse audiences understand how important our exhibitions, acquisitions, and programming. and beautiful works of art on paper can be. KH: What do you consider to be the collection’s I do believe that our public would benefit greatly strength? As new print acquisitions are made, what from having access to more superb prints by some focus would you as curator like to see added? of the greatest printmakers of Western Art: Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Munch, Gauguin, Degas, FC: Since the 1980s, the museum has focused its Picasso, Giorgio Morandi, and Jasper Johns. Since collection in three major areas: European, Latin our collection is only 50 years old, we have made American and American. Sixty-two percent of the enormous strides in a short period of time. But I w w w.bl a ntonmu s e um.org

do think that with the right resources and support we can build the collection so that it can provide even more examples of some of the greatest prints ever made in European art like Durer’s Knight Death and the Devil, Rembrandt’s Three Crosses, Picasso’s La Tauromaquia or Munch’s Madonna. I would also like to start collecting in areas not well represented in the collection. We need more works by minorities in our American collection. Our Latin American collection has many more women represented than our other collections, and I am thinking about how best to incorporate more works on paper by women into the European and American collections with the help of Veronica Roberts, our curator of modern and contemporary art. We have only a handful of works on paper by Africans and only a hundred by Asians. We are now in a world culture. Barriers are breaking down, which is partially due to such great advances in technology. And our print collection, I think, should reflect our new ways of thinking about the world. KH: What will be the Blanton’s next major print exhibition? FC: The exhibition, In the Company of Cats and

Dogs, will open June 22, 2014 and will feature many fantastic prints from the collection and also some superb loans. I am working with a group of scholars and curators who study human-animal interactions and the role of animals in art and culture. The exhibition will focus on the psychology and moral implications of humans’ relationships with cats and dogs and how they have evolved over time in the hopes of fostering new scholarship on the subject and greater public awareness about it. ae As a participant in PrintAustin 2014, the H-E-B Study Room will host an open house with an exciting selection of works from the collection on Thursday, January 16, from 5:00 – 7:00pm. Reservations required. images (left to right): Albrecht Dürer, Martyrdom of Saint Catherine, circa 1497–98, woodcut, 15 3/8 x 11 5/16 inches. Purchase through the generosity of the Still Water Foundation/ Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Untitled, 1919, color screenprint, 9 7/16 x 9 3/8 inches, Gift of Charles and Dorothy Clark/ Feliciano Centurión, Reposa [Rest], circa 1996, hand embroidered pillow, 8 11/16 x 14 15/16 inches, Museum purchase with funds provided by Donald R. Mullins, Jr./ Rembrandt van Rijn, Descent from the Cross by Torchlight, 1654, etching and drypoint on heavy Japanese paper, 8 1/8 x 6 7/16 inches, Purchase in honor of Jonathan Bober's tenth anniversary as Curator of Prints and Drawings through the generosity of David Armstrong, Carolyn Bullard, Dr. and Mrs. Paul Burns, George and Jo Anne Christian, Marian Davis, Susan Garwood, M.K. Hage, Jr., Helen Lea, John A. Robertson, Helmut and Petra Rumbler, Susan Thomas, Elgin W. Ware, Jr., Gerturde Weber, Stephen and Julia Wilkinson, Dave and Reba Williams, an anonymous donor, and members of the Print Study Group

aether

Ernst Kirchner, M채nnerkopf I (Man's Head I), woodcut, 1918, 12.7 x 10.1 cm.

A Better Vice A Texas Petrochemical Engineer Is One of the World’s Most Admired Collectors of German Art by CLAIBORNE SMITH

Eighty

years after Adolf Hitler declared certain German works of art “degenerate,” the term “degenerate art” serves a social good that even Hitler would be forced to acknowledge is remarkably different than what he intended it to mean. The chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler was out to demonize the “primitive international scratchings” of modern artists that he and his political bedfellows felt didn’t reflect the “true Germanic spirit.” In 1937, the Nazis opened an exhibition in Munich of degenerate art, some 600 paintings, sculpture, books, photos and other art. At the opening ceremony of the German House of Art in Berlin that same year, Hitler dictated that From now on we are going to wage a merciless war of destruction against the last remaining elements of cultural disintegration….From now on—of this you can be certain—all those mutually supporting and thereby supporting cliques of chatterers, dilettantes, and art forgers will be picked up and liquidated. Some two million people attended the exhibit.

But as writer Irene Guenther points out in an essay in Broken Brushes: German Art from the Kaiser to Hitler, the long view of that exhibition is the crucial one: The Nazis humiliated German modernists at the time and destroyed some of their careers and lives, but they also ended up making martyrs of them. Broken Brushes is a glimpse into Gus Kopriva’s collection of German art. Kopriva, whose wife is the artist Sharon Kopriva, has acquired some 2,000 prints that date from the 1870’s until the Third Reich. Piece by piece, Kopriva and his wife have salvaged the victims of a culture’s hatred, yes, but their collection has a deeper value than that: Because it comprises prints created so far before the Third Reich, it reveals German artists hinting at the madness their society was becoming before it actually did. Kopriva started collecting prints from the date “when Germany was born,” as he says. That was 1871, when the various provinces and fiefdoms were forged into what we think of, more or less, as modern Germany. Even from that date, there

aether

are revelations of unease in German art, rebellion against the Kaiser, for example, and his strict, unforgiving notions of what constituted true art. As Kopriva’s collection advances into the 20th century, the prints depict more stridently anxious and jittery, unnerving scenes (it is intriguing to note, as Jim Edwards does in an essay in Broken Brushes, that as French Impression was flourishing, with its lush and seductive paintings, German Expressionism favored far more distraught imagery). Take George Grosz’s Löwen und Leoparden Füttern Ihre Jungen (Lions and Leopards Feed Their Young). It depicts a hoarding fatcat (money hugged to his chest, to drive home the point) across a table from an emaciated, yearning youth, with factory smokestacks churning

in the background. Grosz created the print in 1921, when Germany’s international status was deeply degraded during the post-World War I period. But the print says something deeper about the way people treat one another, and how money can irredeemably scar our relationship to a fellow citizen. Kopriva’s collection is a valuable insight to German history, of course, but the fact that it exists at all seems unlikely, to say the least. Kopriva is a petrochemical engineer from Houston, for starters. He has no formal training in art history. In a recent interview, I asked him how he first became drawn to collecting art.

Above: Max Pechstein, Yali und Sein Weisses Weib (Yali and His White Woman), etching, 1923, 24 x 18 cm. Opposite L: Gerhard Marcks, Alte mit Spaten (Old Person with Spade), woodcut, 1944, 31.2 x 24.5 cm. Opposite R: George Grosz, Löwen und Leoparden Füttern Ihre Jungen (Lions and Leopards Feed Their Young), photo lithograph, 1921, 49 x 36.2 cm. from Die Raüber

aether

"After the First Wor it was a fertile bree

Johannes Itten, Das Haus des Weissen Mannes (The House of the White Man), lithograph on smooth paper, 1920, 25.5 x 24.3 cm.

A Conversation with Gus Kopriva CLAY SMITH: You’re an engineer—I don’t hear stock. It’s a vice, but it’s a better vice. So the bottom about a lot of engineers also being art collectors. line is, Sharon and I own 2,000 works on paper, How did you first become involved in art? most of them between 1900 and 1930, during the great Weimar Republic. So that’s how I got started. GUS KOPRIVA: The only reason I’m interested in I’m still studying daily. art is because of my wife. I was born in Germany; I essentially studied on my own and made myself CS: What kind of an engineer are you? proficient in European art history. My specialty is German works. You’re right that most engineers GK: I’m a consulting, petrochemical engineer and are not interested in art, unless they’re from I now work part time. It supports my art habit. Art families that teach art. And they don’t teach it is 90% of my current life. It used to be 20-80 when I in our [engineering] curriculum. In most cases, was a full-time engineer. engineers are just not aware and so I know maybe two engineers in the country who have collections. CS: And you grew up in Germany? The money is there, but they’re interested in other things. GK: I was there until the second grade and my mother married an American soldier, so that’s how I would go take these books and read about German I ended up in America. I went to high school in art. And pretty soon I started reading more and Houston. My father was at Normandy and had an studying and going to galleries all over the world. affair with my mother and I was the result. Then my My job is a global job. I started buying art instead of mother was working for the American army and B roken B r u she s • w w w . f l a t b e d p r e s s . c o m

rld War, the country was really reeling; eding ground for great social art."

met my stepfather, who is also American. CS: It must be a bit like a detective case, finding these works… GK: I started in galleries and then I acquired the work through auction houses and private dealers. And I’m still acquiring work, weekly. Some people do alcohol, some people do women, I do art.

kept it up until the end of the war in 1945, but the majority of the collection is from 1910 to the end of the Second World War. After the First World War, the country was really reeling; it was a fertile breeding ground for great social art. It was like a perfect storm of social upheaval, political chaos, unbelievable inflation, and 3,000,000 unemployed troops after the war and in Berlin, you’re sitting there where you had your drugs and your alcohol and these artists were right in the middle of this. ae

CS: “Degenerate art” is a term people in general have heard about but there are fewer exhibitions about art from the Kaiser to Nazism. Why focus Gus Kopriva will give a talk at the opening of the on that broader, longer period? Broken Brushes exhibition at Flatbed Press in Austin (2832 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.) at 5:30 GK: Germany’s a very young country. Germany was on January 24. The exhibition runs through April 4. hundreds of fiefdoms and provinces and countries that were bounded together in 1871. You had people speaking different dialects and fought each other, essentially, and formed what is now Germany, so I started it when Germany was born. And then I aether

INTERNATIONAL PRINTMAKERS: Crossing Boundaries and Making Connections by ERIN KEEVER

Printmakers are a notoriously collaborative bunch,

but when they live thousands of miles away from one another, their interactions lie less in the studio or printshops, and more in a collective mindset. That’s not to say their relationships are strictly virtual, rather these artists, their works, and their ideas cross actual paths at professional conferences, workshop demonstrations, academic programs, and in this case International Printmakers / An Invitational Exhibition in Austin, Texas. This exhibition is part of PrintAustin 2014 (January 15-February 15, 2014) and is on view at Gallery Shoal Creek (at Flatbed Headquarters). It features the work of seven contemporary artists working in a variety of printmaking media. The selection of artists includes Brian Curling, Ina Kaur, Karen Kunc (also the exhibition’s curator), Monika Meler, Michael Schneider, Annu Vertanen and Koichi Yamamoto. Now based in the United States and Europe, these

artists have lived and worked in countries such as Austria, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan and Poland. Some of these places are traditional centers for printmaking. Others, while once considered outside the art world, are now home to exciting art communities within today’s global environment. Whether through passport or internet; artistic communities are crossing boundaries and connecting like never before, making the international aspect of this show not only apparent, but as Curator, Karen Kunc says, "paramount." Selecting the works in this show, Kunc says she "thought geographically" as she “mentally roamed around the world, wanting to represent global diversity.” The product of her search is work that addresses diverse issues using a range of strategies, yet with distinct intersections between experience

Michael Schneider, rut iro 1, 2, 3, Mokuhanga woodblockprint (Pigment on Japanese Paper), 2003, 15.8 x 9.8 in. each

(geographical, professional, academic, technical), approach (including an unwillingness to be confined to preconceptions about printmaking) and aesthetic decisions (choice of visual elements such as composition, color, line and scale). Kunc says, "All the works of these artists have a strong graphic nature, but with elegance of forms, shapes, colors, line. There is so much work in contemporary printmaking that can have a bombastic, crude aspect, or that is simply narrative, illustrative or representational. So I feel it is important to feature other quality printmakersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; works, who have a more distilled way of seeing important things in the world, and to say it with beauty, quality, and intelligence in unusual ways."

are given plenty of room to breathe, lending forms elegance not always associated with the graphic arts. Such is the case with Annu Vertanenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abstract images, which contain wandering black lines, circling in and around one another. These lyrical lines vary in width and appear almost freehand. Enclosures are often punctuated with random and at the same time deliberate dots of bright color. Vertanenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abstraction actually derives from human movement she observes. The artist says she pictures "mental or emotional movements as well as physical" and makes "routes or tracks."

While many of the printmaking procedures in this exhibition overlap, several participants caution not to limit the discussion to that of technical Connections between visual aspects of this show concerns. Certainly this desire for work not to be can be made. One common characteristic is an reduced to technique is another strong connection. interest in exploiting empty space. Often marks Historically prints were second-rung and painting

aether

L-R, Ina Kaur, Constant Shift, installation of handmade paper with cotton thread / size variable Monika Meler, Fantasy Structure #1, diffused relief print, monotype, 2011, 39 x 28.5 in. Annu Vertanen, Network Traces, woodcut, mokuhanga, 2012, 16 x 12 in.

was privileged. Today many college printing programs are emphasizing digital processes so much that, some wonder if the print, as we (used to) know it, is obsolete. And while some of this exhibition’s artists use traditional methods and some of the works are still signed and numbered collectibles, the exhibition artists are keen to point out an increasing fluidity between media. Prints are crossing boundaries: becoming installation, performance-related, small handouts, published book art, and all sorts of other print-based media. Images and text can be printed on any imaginable surface including three-dimensional objects, taking prints sometimes off the wall and rendering them sculptural or installation-like. Artists might use drawing or photography or they might combine printing and painting, making original monotypes, instead of multiples. Maybe they make use of sequencing, commenting on printmaking’s “copied” character or “printed” quality.

Ina Kaur's work shows recent trends in so-called printmaking and its creative potential. Born in New Dehli, India, Kaur uses repetition in an installation called Constant Shift. Here there is no printing. Here there is no printmaking used. Rather handmade cup-shaped paper forms, inlaid with colored thread, are arranged and affixed to the wall in various dimensions. Playing with the print condition of multiplicity, there is no need for matrix or a press. This approach suits Kaur’s exploration of complex systems of communication and points of convergence between dichotomies of "East and West, local and global, and ancient and modern." A native of Japan, Koichi Yamamoto teaches in The School of Art at the University of Tennessee's prestigious printmaking program. With a strong background in ceramics, many of his works are quite sculptural. In this show he offers five origami folded prints in deep shadow box frames. The folded prints’ smallish size (10” x 12”) belies their

strong impact (He admits to recently studying facial expressions and some figures seem reminiscent of William Blake’s visionary work.) Dramatically different in scale are two towering (96” x 39”) monotypes (2013). Painterly and luxurious with nuanced application of viscose pigment, their broad swaths of black remind me of a Franz Kline painting, but more graceful. Having studied semiotics, Michael Schneider is interested in communicative strategies and his prints are meant to be read (even installed in a horizontal order that encourages this). By juxtaposing fragmentary photographic images of Viennese buildings and structures, he constructs theoretical implications. References are made between Vienna’s Jewish sites such as the cemetery in Währing, and the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial designed by British artist Rachel Whiteread. His next print shows part of the Museum Quarter, a reference to artwork (much of it once owned by Jewish collectors) that ended up

in Austrian museums during the Nazi period. On top of all of that, he combines images of petroglyphs that he says, "are open for interpretation and in some cases are a play with maps to locate a certain place." Monika Meler examines memory in her abstract work. Born in Poland and having moved to Chicago at the age of ten, she revisits her roots by investigating Polish folklore. Her works are intended to be hung in space (instead of against a wall) so that light emanating through them literally illuminates honeycombed and web-like structures amidst rich fields of color. Her hybrid print/ installations reflect upon and reawaken forgotten or re-imagined landscapes drawn from personal recollection and visualization. Viewing a work from two perspectives by an artist who has experienced both Eastern and Western European culture is also provocative.

aether

Koichi Yamamoto, Goma Engraving, origami folded print, 2013, 10 x 12 in. opposite: Koichi Yamamoto, Tazudo, monotype, 2013, 96 x 30 in.

Though many of this exhibition’s artists know each other, of course the most obvious link between them is Karen Kunc, the show’s curator and participating artist who knows all of them. In addition to making remarkably complex and colorful woodcuts herself, Kunc has taught a few of these artists and learned alongside a few more. For example, she mentored Brian Curling, also in this show. Curling uses woodcuts depicting elements from nature and also creates large-scale public installations and collaborative letterpress books. Kunc stands apart as someone with a broad reach, not just socially but intellectually, as a student of the world. Together the selections show her understanding of what she has seen both in the United States and her numerous travels abroad. Unpacking a few of the issues in this group of work reveals a common desire to examine personal histories and express universal ideas. Even with its constellation of connections and similarities, this group invitational is varied enough to create fruitful conversation. As Meler puts it, “Exhibiting in groups creates a multi-lingual dialogue in one space, which is much like being in

a foreign airport, where you hear many different sounds. As a traveler, I know these sounds mean something, but it takes time to decipher exactly what. And in that mystery I find myself being excited and aware of every moment.” Ultimately, printmaking, whether technique or strategy, and in whatever shape it takes, is a way of communicating as well as manifesting one’s thoughts or feelings. As Kaur says, “Printmaking continues to be an inclusive medium of expression, rather than exclusive.” ae International Printmakers / An Invitational Exhibition, organized by Gallery Shoal Creek and Karen Kunc, is on view from January 24 through February 15, 2014 in conjunction with PrintAustin 2014. Gallery Shoal Creek will host an artist talk on January 25, 11 a.m. For more information contact (512) 454-6671 or info@galleryshoalcreek.com.

w w w. g a l l e r y s h o a l c r e ek . co m

aether

Staging the Landscape: The Sculptural Work of Jason Urban by JULIA V. HENDRICKSON

In the mid-to-late 18th century, in the heyday of Western European landscape painting, philosophical debates over the nature of aesthetics centered around the concepts of beauty and the sublime. Edmund Burke famously made the distinction that balance, smoothness, and color lay in the realm of the beautiful, whereas vastness and terror were in the realm of the sublime. Immanuel Kant added the caveat that the terror of the sublime could only be invoked by an experience of nature. Early print historian William Gilpin further elaborated that the “picturesque” was an aspect of the beautiful in nature that was capable of being reduced and illustrated in painting or in print: the design element. As a result of this conversation, landscape painters like Claude Lorrain, Caspar David Friedrich, and J.M.W. Turner were lauded for capturing nature in states that were both alluringly picturesque and terrifyingly vast. At the turn of the 19th century image-viewing devices like the stereoscope, popular tourism accessories such as the “Claude glass” (a convex mirror used to frame, darken, Sunrise Sticks digital print on paper mounted to poplar, 72 x 1 x 2 inches each, 2009

22 aether

aether

Forest Fire, Forest File, digital prints on paper mounted to cardboard, 72 x 60 x 16 inches, 2013

and distort the landscape like a Lorrain painting), and the subsequent birth of photography ensured that “picturesque” would be forever linked to both landscape and photographic image. In an upcoming exhibition at Wally Workman Gallery (Austin, TX), Jason Urban presents sculptures relating to beauty, the sublime, and the picturesque, with a 21st century twist. In part an amateur photographer of wryly clichéd landscapes and sunsets, Urban revels in the ubiquity of the picturesque image, particularly as it is replicated in the technological realm of screen savers and desktop backgrounds. These placeholders for the real are imbued with tension and irony, for often this kind of stock footage is something we absorb through our screens on a daily basis, to the exclusion of the natural world outside.

that cause him to avoid the landscape, to distance himself with the camera. He confesses to have a fervent distaste for the “dirty and inconvenient” reality of nature. And, why not? Artist communities are primarily structured around the city; economic, social, and professional networks magnetically keep artists locked into the concrete grid. It’s not insignificant that art residencies are primarily situated as a temporary escape from the urban environment, a structured way for the artist to experience the often-alien reality of nature.

In Sunrise Sticks and Sunset Sticks (2009), two works using digital prints on paper mounted to pieces of poplar (1” x 2” x 6’ each), a highly rasterized image of the sun intersected by a landscape is adhered to pieces of wood leaning against a wall. The lumber is casually propped like the yet-to-beanimated broom handles of Disney’s Sorcerer’s Urban himself notes the (sublime) aspects of nature Apprentice. Up close, it’s hard to see more than a w w w. w a l l y w o r k m a n g a l l e r y. co m

game of colorful, spotted pick-up sticks, or a row of oversize, sugar-coated Japanese Pocky treats; there is no immediately evident visual entrance to the work. Formally, Sticks is a colorful, ramshackle fence. Yet, moving away from the piece, the fourcolor dots of the photographic image come into focus and the wooden fence becomes a bright window to look through. Suddenly the landscape is visible.

mounted to the sides of office boxes is arranged into an imposing barrier. The depicted landscape is darker and more mundane than the grandeur of the morning horizon. The rectangular and stacked format of the boxes recalls a stream of online Tumblr images. They beg to be reshuffled, made disorderly. The work does not hide its dimensionality, but still is steadfastly forward facing, monumental on its stage.

What Urban’s work gets at is the unintentional effect of the picturesque in nature to invoke photography. It’s difficult for an artist (or anyone, really) to ignore the pleasure of a vivid gradient within a stellar horizontal composition. Sunrise-as-provocation. Automatically reach for your phone. I am here, but now this moment is dying, I am its caretaker. There is an expectation that what we are seeing will soon cease to exist. This compulsion to document the quotidian demise places the landscape image into the realm of memento mori.

Urban’s work interacts with theatre, and the stage specifically, in a way that postmodern critics like Michael Fried may have found problematic. Fried wrote in “Art & Objecthood” (1967): “there is a war going on between theatre and modernist painting, between the theatrical and the pictorial,” and, dismissively, “what lies between the arts is theatre.” Yet, visually Urban’s work is not overly “theatrical.” It simply highlights the ways in which the gallery serves as an amphitheatre for the presentation of a work of art. Pieces like Sticks and Forest Fire exist at the back of the arena, constructed in three A unique aspect, too, of Sticks, and much of Urban’s dimensions but presented for one vantage point. other work, is the magnetic pull his sculpture has to the wall. Often three-dimensional, his work is Above all, despite his subject matter, Urban stakes hardly ever meant to be experienced “in the round.” no claim on wilderness. He’s content with just a Indeed, he’s a champion of the primarily two- split fountain, a rainbow roll, the printmaker’s dimensional medium of printmaking. In order to equivalent of a sunset gradient. A simple, beloved see the sunrise/sunset image of Sticks you have to trick to lay more than one color down at a time. stand apart from it, at an undetermined distance, Where the edges meet a horizon inevitably forms, some lengths away from the wall. The viewer’s echoing the commonplace, but always picturesque, “click” of realization for this piece happens, daily routine of nature. ae essentially, where the photographer stood when taking the picture. Like a director watching from A lecturer in printmaking in the department the audience, the placement of the artist is with the of Art & Art History at the University of Texas viewer, poised in an act of looking, waiting for the at Austin, Jason Urban is also widely known as performance to begin. one of the co-founders of the print enthusiast’s website, Printeresting.org. Urban holds an MFA In Urban’s recent sculpture, Forest Fire, Forest File and an MA in printmaking from the University (Winter) (2013), an installation of digital prints of Iowa. aether

In Pursuit of

Cultural Identity by CATHERINE ZINSER

Here in Austin, we think locally. You can sip on

a cappuccino, browse boutiques, dine on first rate BBQ, and catch a show of a homegrown musician— all on Willie Nelson Blvd. We love our city and all the wonderfully weird, creative dreamers in it. Our intimate connection to all things local bonds us together. This environment is where folk art flourishes. Folk art is a piece of decorative or functional art created by a self-taught or outsider artist–anyone outside the established art scene. Folk artists rely on a collection of easily interpreted motifs, symbols, designs, and patterns, forming a language readable by those with a commonly

held heritage. By no means self-taught, many well-trained contemporary artists work within the boundaries of this tradition. Adopting a standardized visual vocabulary, artists such as Kathryn Polk, Deborah Mersky, and Annalise Gratovich weave complex narratives, capturing the very essence of cultural identity. “Many artists draw from their memories and that’s what I’m doing with some hyperbole.” Kathryn Polk’s lithographs offer hours of interpretation. The precisely rendered narratives are a homogeny of four generations of women in

image (opposite): Kathryn Polk, Lesson Learned, hand-printed stone and plate lithograph, 14 x 11 inches, 2013

aether

Kathryn Polk, This I know Hand-printed stone and plate lithograph, 12.5 x 17.5 inches, 2011

her family: her mother, her sister and herself, her daughter, and her granddaughter. Her mother’s mentorship was important to her and a strong female voice is evident throughout the narratives in her artwork. Polk grew up with traditional values in the south; she and her sister received toy ironing boards and kitchen sets while her brothers received erector sets and doctor’s kits. Particularly relevant to Baby Boomers, the images have slight sardonic undertones; “at a quick glance it appears humorous but if you look closer you begin to see things as they really were,” explains Polk.

Every motif in Polk’s work has strong symbolic meaning. In Lesson Learned and This I Know the young girl wears a pink dress, identical to the Simplicity pattern Polk’s mother sewed time and time again. Articles of domestic chores are scattered throughout. A firefighter, her father is present in a number of her pieces as a flame emitting from the hearts of the female figures. The overarching theme can be read from the cactus paddles perched on the young girl’s head. “As the cactus wren builds her nest she mentors me. My art is about a woman’s innate tenacity to adapt

Deborah Mersky, Captive Jack Rabbit Clay relief print and gouache on Japanese paper, 24 x 18 inches 2013

to any environment.” Native to the American southwest, the cactus wren is curious, mischievous, and is known for forming life-long bonds. The female cactus wren builds safe, impenetrable nests deep within the prickly spines of cacti. The cactus paddles in Polk’s prints are suggestive of this type of secure setting and the bonds between the women in her family, unbreakable bonds that will continue for generations.

to mimic the Texas hill country. Merksy’s images are snap shots of Central Texas; she captures the flora and fauna of our world. In her new series of woodcuts The Villagers, Carrying Things from Home, Annalise Gratovich dives into her Ukrainian and Eastern European heritage. Gratovich culls mythology and folklore and examines regional textiles and folk arts like matyryoshka dolls–Russian nesting dolls– for inspiration. Whereas Polk’s work is female centric, Gratovich’s is androgynous. Viewers project themselves onto the figures–women refer to the figures as “she” and men as “he” in an attempt to identify with them. When humans see personifications in art we immediately try to form connections. As highly social creatures, it is in our nature.

“I breathe in my surroundings near the Pedernales River, where a whiff of wilderness still exists,” says artist Deborah Mersky. Raised in Austin, Mersky sought refuge exploring brushy deer paths as a child, collecting bits of nature, and developing a rich assemblage of imagery. Now a country dweller, she documents her rugged sanctuary with a unique style of relief printing. Mersky forms a block out of clay; before the block is fully dry, she carves her design. The materials are inexpensive and create a Each print in the suite of eight will illustrate nice surface for hand printing. She prints in black an archetype of village life–The Gambler, The ink and then applies layers of gouache, brightly hued Mariner, and The Hunter are finished; work will aether

Annalise Gratovich (from left to right): The Mariner, The Gambler, The Hunter from the series The Villagers Carrying Things From Home, 2013 Hand carved woodcuts, 5 x 3 1/2 feet each, printed at Flatbed Press in Austin, Texas Photo by Tina Weitz Photography

soon begin on a builder, a minister, and a mother crone figure; the series will likely conclude with a fool. The collection is about identity, memory, and the burden of accountability. The villagers suggest that our actions shape who we are-either good or bad. Eastern European heritage is not required in order to relate to Gratovichâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work; the humble figures, burdened by the wares of their respective trades speak to everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ancestry. One could argue that the medium of printmaking is a somewhat poetic way to generate this type of imagery. Printmaking was invaluable to the

30 aether

spread of knowledge and ideas in early modern Europe. Prints telling European stories and demonstrating European style traveled across the Atlantic to the Americas where they were culturally assimilated. Today, American culture is expansive with hundreds of tributaries; the prints of Polk, Mersky, and Gratovich capture snippets of our diverse society just as folk art of the 18th and 19th centuries captured the spirit of a young culture. ae

Ideas.

aether

THE CONTEMPORARY PRINT Juried exhibition of Texas Printmakers January 18 - February 15 Sponsored by Women Printmakers of Austin, The Contemporary Print will officially launch PrintAustin 2014. Jurors Katherine Brimberry, Francesca Consagra and Jeffery Dell reviewed 350 submissions from 129 Texas artists. Twenty-five original works of art by twenty-three artists were selected for this inaugural exhibition which will open on January 18, at Big Medium Gallery at Canopy.

The Contemporary Print is a survey of the

historical techniques and the current innovations in printmaking. The exhibit highlights the traditional hand drawn and mark making of Tom Druecker’s lithograph “Trick Roper’s 3”, and Kate Borcherding’s etching, “Huntsville Evening”. The show brings the fresh patterns and layering of ink in Catherine Dudley’s “Networks” together with the new technical approaches seen in Ryan O’Malley’s "Totem II (Han)" that combines laser cut stencils and screenprinting.

Tom Druecker, Trick Roper's 3, lithograph, 30 x 22 in. paper size

Veronica Ceci & Samantha Salazar both utilize the matrix and multiplicity of printmaking in their wall size installation pieces. This is a strong collection of ink, paper and image, but it is the absence of paper that has us rethinking the language of printmaking. Sabra Booth’s prints on rubber oil pipe gaskets and Mary Fischer’s “Cotton Gin”, a solar plate etching on clay exemplify the possibilities of print and relevancy of printmaking in contemporary visual arts.

Veronica Cece, Augmented Realities, installation of relief monotypes; 10 x 11 ft (scalable wall installation)

aether

SELECTED ARTISTS Sabra Booth Kate Borcherding Veronica J. Ceci Ryan Cronk Jesus De La Rosa Tom Druecker Catherine Dudley Mary Fischer Lari Gibbons Teresa Gomez-Martorell Annalise Gratovich Tim High Brian Johnson Padaric Kolander Adrienne Lichliter Anna Mavromatis Ryan Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Malley Elvia Perrin Ruthie Powers Matt Rebholz Above: Catherine Dudley, Blue Network, etching with chine collĂŠ, 18 x 14 in. paper size Below: Ryan O'Malley, Totem II (Han), Laser Cut Stencil and Screenprint; 24 x 18 in. paper/plate size

Clifton Riley Ricardo Ruiz Samantha Parker Salazar

Kate Borcherding, Huntsville Evening, etching, 18 x 23 in paper size

Since its founding in 1995, Women Printmakers of Austin has played a significant role in the local arena of printmakers. The organization is first and foremost an incubator for women (and men!) interested in developing skills and engaging in printmaking as a vehicle for creative expression. It, too, promotes community and serves as a conduit to expand the audience for fine art prints. As an organization, they have successfully nurtured artists and increased awareness of printmaking techniques. WPA has generously provided their resources in contributing to the organizing of PrintAustin. Chairpersons Elvia Perrin and Cathy Savage have worked tirelessly to bring the Austin art community together for the month long series of events celebrating printmaking.

aether

L-R Samantha Salazar, Fluidensity: System (I.); cut paper, engraving, monotype, drawing, painting, installation; 10 x 10 ft scalable wall installation Ricardo Ruiz, Fall Buds, relief on mulberry, 17 x 21 in. plate size Elvia Perrin, Fossil, color intaglio, 19 x 13 in. paper size

aether

ARTICULATING IDEAS: Printmaking At Texas State University In the art world, Austin is often compared to Houston. Houston shines in many ways but Austin leads the way in printmaking. The print programs at area collegesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;The University of Texas, Texas State University, Austin Community College and othersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;can be credited with bringing attention to the medium and graduating a steady stream of young, enthusiastic printmakers.

growth of the University's School of Art and Design. The printmaking program is recognized as a vibrant, integral part of the school's offerings.

Dell and I continued our conversation in the printshop where advanced students worked to complete their semester portfolios. Intense and articulate, Dell talked about the program and his philosophical views about what makes a strong One afternoon in December, I had a chance to tour printmaking program in the university setting. I the BFA Thesis Exhibit at Texas State University in encouraged him to share his thoughts with our San Marcos with Professor Jeffery Dell, who, along readers. -Judith Taylor with Brian Johnson and Adrienne Butler, teaches printmaking. Dell joined the faculty at Texas State University in 2000 and has been instrumental in the

by JEFFREY DELL

The Printmaking area at Texas State is well

grounded in print methods and contemporary print communities, but it is also integrated into the larger areas of Painting and Drawing. Printmaking majors cycle through a program of topics and techniques covered across five levels, and as they enter the Thesis level they work with instructors from Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking to make their BFA thesis work. Specifically what I want to avoid is the dual traps of print programs: to either be defensively exclusionary or to be subsumed by painting. I believe strongly in the value of print media for all students, whether in Studio Art, Communication Design, Art Education, or even Physics, for that matter. But I also believe that the

various print worlds can sometimes do themselves a disservice by allowing the conversations in the larger art worlds to never cross over to those topics addressed in print. I remember hearing something years ago, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Painters talk about ideas, printmakers talk about aquatints.â&#x20AC;? I like talking about aquatints, but I do not want to do so at the exclusion of other conversations. I do not want print to be quarantined. I believe print needs to be defined very broadly. If we limit this definition to the traditional handpulled techniques then we are effectively staking our identity entirely on a craft. I love craft, I love tools, and I love really well made things. I also love beauty in all forms. But if all of this is studied and aether

Top: Adrienne Butler with students Bottom: Cassie White, officer of PROOF, the student printmaking organization, giving a sketchbook binding demo to the Graphic Novel class taught by Matthew Rebholz, seen here with his students. Matt also teaches as Texas State.

celebrated without also participating in elements of other media, then we become stifled and inbred. I try to cultivate an atmosphere of openness; I do not control the definition of print. We all need injections of surprising and foreign media. Screen printing is one of the fastest and easiest to learn of the print techniques. Many students already know about it even if they don’t yet know how to do it. We teach it early in the progression of courses as a means to pique excitement. It’s different than a few decades ago when screen was a sort of bastard child of fine art printing. We have a Color Theory class that Adrienne Butler teaches that is based in screen printing. We replicate some of the Joseph Albers experiments and do other projects that use layering of transparent colors as a means to mix them. Albers’ use of serigraphy to explore perceptual phenomena of color theory remains highly influential. Serigraphy creates an entirely flat surface, without any texture, and this allows the hue to be isolated. It’s an ideal medium for insightful work that engages color. It’s challenging, but really rewarding. Cyan, magenta

and yellow are, after all, the “corrected” primaries, as I call them. They yield a much wider gamut of colors than the traditional blue, red, and yellow. For many years my own work was nearly exclusively black and white and based in copper plate intaglio. People started to know me for my large mezzotints. But one Christmas break I decided I needed to try a few ideas with screen printing, and I really haven’t shifted back. The work jumped into color in a major way, which is now really central to what I do. My last show at Art Palace Gallery in Houston was called Follies, and color is a central element in that—color as light and as a phenomenon of human perceptual psychology, how we “read” color spatially, how we imagine it sometimes or exaggerate it. It’s easy to forget that color, although dependent on natural phenomena, is still something that happens between our eyeballs and our brain. Our Printmaking Program is distinguished by its connection to the Communication Design area of the School of Art and Design. Communication Design is a super strong program that attracts very

aether

driven and talented students. Our printmaking classes are always populated with a mix of design and art students, among others. The rigor and professionalism of the design program is a nice counterpoint to the healthy strangeness of the art students. This feature—design wedded to art—is, along with the general quality of students, one of the major elements that make me so happy to call this place home. I am very proud of our program. Many of our students go on to do graduate work in print at institutions like Rhode Island School of Design, Cranbrook Academy of Art, the University of New Mexico, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Multiple alumni have had work accepted into the prestigious juried exhibitions at the International Print Center New York; plus, over the last few years, four undergraduate students were accepted into IPCNY’s exhibitions. Most recently, Alison Whitworth, who is a current printmaking major, had two of her pieces accepted into the New Prints: Winter 2014 exhibition and we are super excited for her. I think that’s rather incredible since the IPNYC shows are highly competitive, and our students competed with faculty, professional publishers, and students in MFA programs. One of the biggest challenges in teaching print is knowing when and how to transition to talking about the world of ideas. I love really fine technical work, but if the work is going to have legs in the larger

42 aether

art world, it’s still going to be judged as an image, and only very rarely solely as a print. Critiques are the primary means to begin this discussion with the students, and consequently play an important role in classes. Looking at good examples of other artists is also really important, getting the students to feel like they’re part of these larger communities. Printmaking offers a diversity of opportunities for skills. It remains a field grounded in technical and manual skills, but, like most art, the poetics and ideas remain paramount. At Texas State we try very hard to find a balance between these elements. We enjoy the fact that the students feel they are gaining a set of concrete skills, something they can point to and easily name. But they also graduate being able to articulate their ideas, to recognize the dialog created in the body of work, and to see their work in the context of larger art worlds. Texas State’s print shop is a great place for research, refuge, hard work, collaboration, and positive spirit. It’s a good place to solve technical problems and overcome frustrations. It’s also a great place to be a part of a community, which I find essential. We all need the intelligent dialogue that good community offers. ae Jeffery Dell is a professor of Studio Art: Printmaking at Texas State University. Most recently, he had two works accepted into International Print Center New York’s New Prints: New Prints: Autumn 2013: "Screenrush" and "Thunder Rock".

w w w. f i n e a r t s . t x s t at e . e d u

Innovation.

INTO THE JUNGLE With Jules Buck Jones By KATHERINE BRIMBERRY

I saw a Crow. . . Orca was I Many artists come to Flatbed Press to create

original prints. For some it can be a bit like wandering in the jungle, particularly when a complex process is undertaken as was the recent collaboration between Austin artist Jules Buck Jones and Flatbed’s master printers.

broken down and abstracted with exaggerated shapes and rhythms. It is based on observational drawings I made while in Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica. This etching was fun to make and was a friendly introduction to the possibilities of printmaking.”

An emerging talent known for his drawings, paintings and installations, Jones first worked with Flatbed master printers-myself and Tracy Mayrello-in early 2013 to create an etching titled Continental Divide. “This initial project,” says Jones, “ is a clean graphic depiction of dense forest imagery,

The resulting print was a beauty, and a second project started right away. What emerged was again dense jungle imagery but in a much larger format; in fact it is one of the largest etchings created as a collaborative effort in the Flatbed shop. Jules was ready to dive in, but as is often the case,

Orca was I, 2013, multi-plate etching with aquatint, 45" x 32" plate size I Saw a Crow, 2013, multi-plate etching with aquatint, 45" x 32" plate size

he faced unfamiliar territory, full of unknowns, and processes that were tedious and unlike [his] primary medium. "I had to rearrange my usual approach to image making and work collaboratively," says Jones. "At times I was working completely backwards, and blind. There is a level of complexity I can achieve in my paintings by layering, covering and opening up areas with little planning; it is all attack. The large print required a game plan. The back and forth of painting was possible but in a less immediate fashion. A lot of problem solving came into play

which was super fun to work through, like putting together a large puzzle." I worked with Jones to plan the project. During a studio visit, his current work suggested that a colorful multi-layered etching would fit his vision. The solution was for Jules to make two copper plates with distinct matrices to create a dense tesserae of shapes and gradations. Jules began the first plate using a soft ground technique which allowed him to draw a linear image onto the plate. Next, he added dark shapes using aether

Jules Buck Jones painting stop out on a plate.

the “sugar-lift” technique. Here, the image is painted directly onto the copper plate with special ink made out of sugar, ink and soap. This allows the artist to incorporate brush strokes as he painted a bold pattern of shapes suggesting the jungle and its inhabitants. He repeated the process, adding additional shapes until achieved an almost claustrophobic jungle environment. In all, the plate was exposed to five acid baths to etch the complex image. “The image is still of congested forest information, but this time [the multi-stepped process] provided a spectrum of darks and lights, that the first project did not attempt. Here, the entire emotion and temperature of the etching changes with the manipulation of the colors,” Jones says with a hint of excitement. After experimenting with the key plate, Jules created a second copper plate using an aquatint process which allowed him to etch shapes of different values. This adds a dimension of both color and depth. With both plates ready, the printing began; experimental color trials were pulled combining a varied range of colors. The results were stunning, and with difficulty, two versions were selected to edition. In I Saw a Crow, the key plate (sugar-lift), inked in black dominates. Printed over the blue green background plate, the nuances of the mark making comes through giving a sense of the entanglement of the jungle, Orca Was I provides a stark contrast, “Here, the key plate was inked in white, the back plate in dark brown,” notes master printer Mayrello. “This allows the imagery from the back plate to come forward allowing tones to fade in and out, suggesting a very surreal environment.” Read together the titles create a palindrome-I Saw a Crow and Orca Was I-cementing the relationship between the two views. Seen side by side the two images play off of one another and give new expression and beauty to the jungle imagery. The light changes, hidden images appear, the density of the foliage closes or opens and chaos reigns within the rule of nature. ae

46 aether

w w w. f l atb e d p r e s s . co m

Impact.

aether

datebook Select PrintAUSTIN shows January/February 2014 January 10 though March 1 CHRISTA BLACKWOOD: SILVER AND INK Photo MĂŠthode Gallery

January 11 through February 8 UT PRINTMAKING: WORKING GENERATIONS Davis Gallery

Christa Blackwoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s evocative landscapes are featured in the photo gravure series, "Naked Lady: A Dot Red Series." "A Dot Red" explores new perspectives on traditional genres and images found in landscape and portrait photography. By combining historical photographic techniques with more contemporary conceptual strategies, these works shift the focus of attention, and enable a reconsideration of its classical subjects. Davis Gallery will be filled with work by eleven University of Texas print makers. With 'Working Generations', the work of three generations: faculty, graduate students, and alumni will be on display. The pieces on view have been selected to show the versatility and range of printmaking techniques, as well as engage the public on the future of print making. The exhibition will highlight innovations that are pushing boundaries in printmaking by showing three-dimensional sculptural works and installation pieces alongside two dimensional prints.

January 17 through February 9 PRINTAUSTIN 2014: A CELEBRATION OF PRINTMAKING Georgetown Art Center Printmakers from across the United States come together in an exhibit that celebrates the art of printmaking. The works of Seth Daulton, S.L. Dickey, Nancy Diessner, Amy Guadagnoli, Deborah Maris Lader, Richie Lassansky, Lynn Newcomb, Liz Shepherd, and Julia Talcott represent the different styles ond forms of printmaking.

February 10-11 THE AMAZING HANCOCK BROTHERS Texas State University Infamous “low-tech” print masters, Texas-born The Amazing Hancock Brothers look to shock as much as inform. Their bold, unabashed style combines screen printing, woodcuts, and acrylic into mixed-use pieces that resemble part Circus Freak posters, part insane patterns, and all crazy, in-your-face attitude. Brothers Charles and John often chuck all sense of propriety out the window, then rip down the curtains, screen clowns or skulls or grotesque portraits on them, and then chuck that out the window, too. As members of Dirty Printmakers of America, they are able to use their ferocious, fearless talent to push the awareness and accessibility of printmaking to the huddled masses, democratizing art and technique.

February 7 through 28 Mapping: Printed Works by Elvia Perrin Artworks Gallery Printed work by Elvia Perrin is a collection of works on paper connecting concept and process. On view will be prints from her trees series using sections of photography of tree rings that have been reassembled into geometric shapes. Other prints will show the abstract and beauty of the printmaking process through layering ink, embossing of texture and combining or surface and line.

February 13

CURATOR’S TOUR OF “THE WORLD AT WAR, 1914-1918”

Harry Ranson Center The HRC’s WWI exhibition contains several items print related including color lithograph war posters, prints by Eric Gill, and Apollinaire’s Calligrames and the tour focuses on print materials.

February 15 FLATBED CONTEMPORARY PRINT FAIR Flatbed Press and Galleries Texas printmakers and publishers of fine art prints will be showing work in a print fair setting and demonstating printmaking techniques to the public.

aether

next issue

Spring/Summer 2014

ae aether (Greek αἰθήρ aithēr[1])

n. 1 the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere 2 a medium that in the wave theory of light permeates all space and transmits transverse waves 3 personification of the sky or upper air breathed by the Olympians.