Juried Printmaking Show in Concord, MA

 

Just dropped off my reduction linoleum print, "And So...It Comes Every Year" for the Fresh Ink print show in the Allie Kussin Gallery at The Umbrella Arts Center, 40 Stow Street, Concord, MA. Open daily 9A-9P

Newburyport Art Walk

On Saturday, September 30th the public is invited to visit the many galleries and artists' studios during Newburyport's Art Walk. 

My studio at 53 Middle Street will welcome the public for a " hands on" printmaking project. Materials will be provided.  

https://www.newburyportnews.com/news/local_news/newburyport-artwalk-hosts-fall-events/article_738f5b3a-53c4-11ee-916e-e38b4850548e.html

https://www.newburyportnews.com/news/local_news/newburyport-artwalk-hosts-fall-events/article_738f5b3a-53c4-11ee-916e-e38b4850548e.html

Group Painting Exhibit in Newburyport

 

 

SAGA Fine Print Exhibition and Handing It Down

May 18 @ 5:30 pm - July 1 @ 4:00 pm

Beginning this May, the Artists Archives is thrilled to host a Fine Print Exhibition featuring the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), one of the nation’s oldest organizations dedicated to creative printmaking. Based in New York City, SAGA was founded in 1915 to promote the advancement of the graphic arts. Over their 108-year history, they have exhibited such preeminent modern artists as Henri Matisse, Mary Cassatt, Käthe Kollwitz, Edward Hopper, Joseph Pennell, and Pablo Picasso, and continue to count some of the world’s most accomplished printmakers among their ranks.

 

The exhibition at the Artists Archives will include over 50 prints produced by their internationally renowned membership. Juror Mindy Tousley describes, “As one would expect from such an esteemed organization, the work submitted was emblematic of the quality and professionalism of its members. While the chosen pieces varied widely, there was a common bond expressed among the artists, and that was the love they held for printmaking…this exhibition is a celebration of their years of experience and love of the art form.”

 

“I get excited about ink and paper,” German born artist Dirk Hagner effuses. “The textures, the subtle build-up of sheen in successive ink layers, the gentle dimensionality impressions leave on the sheet, the feel of the printing blocks, the sounds, and scents – it’s the whole mix. It is seductive, challenging, often surprising, and always exhilarating.”

 

The artists’ passion for their medium translates directly into their technical prowess. The exhibition boasts several reduction relief prints, referred to by Picasso as “suicide prints” because of the inability to make corrections as the block is cut away to produce layers of color. Also on display are jaw-dropping mezzotints which achieve a velvet-soft tonality by pitting a metal plate with thousands of interlocking dots. Converge by Jayne Reid Jackson, for example, highlights the medium’s pastel quality by depicting a pool of glass marbles in photorealistic detail. Ringed by a circle of upturned crabs, the articulated white bellies and the glittering orbs reflect the light in a dramatic scene of tabletop chiaroscuro.

 

In addition to being masters of their physical craft, the printmakers selected for the exhibition are also masters of observation. With laser-like precision, the artists capture the heartbeat of a city or the delicate cycles of nature on a printing plate and call forth their images for our reflection. As artist Alan Petrulis explains, “To truly experience this world, one must not just look but learn to see and listen. Places that speak to me become points of translation, points to be transcribed onto paper in a language made of a thousand little lines and marks. Some of these voices are deeply fixed in the land. Some arrive through fleeting moments like when a stoplight turns red and a truck halts in front of a street mural to open a dialog…”

 

Printmaking has the uncanny ability to strip away life’s cacophony to reveal the essence of a time and place. This meditative subtraction can be seen in Susan Jaworski-Stranc’s relief print And So…It Comes Every Year, which distills the swirling chaos of a forest fire brought on by climate change down to dynamic blocks of fiery orange, green and dousing blue. Another piece, Dreams Over Brooklyn, by Karen Whitman, converts the dazzle of a city’s color and detail to an impactful, pulsing vignette of line, contrast, and form.

 

For Whitman, so too does the labor of her practice serve as a reinforcement of her personal values. “The physicality and rigor of carving and printing reminds me daily of the hard work and patience it takes to accomplish most anything meaningful,” she explains. “I am also determined in this world of push-button images and shortcuts of convenience, to keep the tradition of making hand-pulled prints alive, as they enhance the richness of the experience of appreciating art ~ and of being a human being.”

 

The SAGA Fine Print Exhibition will be celebrated with an in-person opening reception on Thursday, May 18^th 5:30 – 8:00pm. Four exhibition awards will be sponsored by The Print Club of Cleveland, and will be juried by Dr. Emily J. Peters, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

 

To accompany the show, the Artists Archives will also present Handing It Down, an exhibition featuring prints from the Jack and Linda Lissauer Collection. Curated by Jack Lissauer, the show will focus on artists who are also educators dedicated to passing down the knowledge of their craft to the next generation.

 

A variety of exciting programming will also support the SAGA Fine Print Exhibition. On Wednesday, May 31^st 7:00 – 8:00pm the Archives will host the virtual program From Stone to Silicone: The Future of Printmaking with Michael Menchaca and Maggie Denk-Leigh. How has the technology of printmaking evolved? And what current digital innovations are shaping the print world today? Join renowned contemporary printmaker Michael Menchaca and the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Printmaking Department Chair Maggie Denk-Leigh as they provide a fascinating overview of the evolution of fine art printing and look ahead to its exciting future through the lens of Menchaca’s socially engaged digital and multimedia work. REGISTER ON ZOOM

 

On Wednesday, June 21^st 7:00 – 8:00pm, Dr. Emily J. Peters, Cleveland Museum of Art’s Curator of Prints and Drawings, will discuss her selections for the SAGA Fine Print Exhibition Awards. Peters will be joined by Diego Briceno, Vice President of SAGA, Mindy Tousley, Exhibition Juror, and the award-winning artists who will provide fascinating insight into their pieces in the show. REGISTER ON ZOOM

NYC Print Show

 

New Climate Change exhibit

 

Exhibition Opening: Welcome to the Symbiocene Saturday September 2, 4:00pm to 7:00pm Exhibition Opening 70 Washington Street, Marblehead, MA 01945 Informal reception starts at 4:00 pm. Come & meet som   Exhibition Opening: Welcome to the Symbiocene Saturday September 2, 4:00pm to 7:00pm   Exhibition Opening 70 Washington Street, Marblehead, MA 01945 Informal reception starts at 4:00 pm. Come & meet some of the 24 artists participating in this great exhibition, meet new and old friends over a glass of wine!  CHECK OUT THE ARTI WEBSITE     An eventful exhibition of artworks by a group of Artists who are inspired by environmental justice, including members of Shared Habitat Earth (SHE) - www.sharedhabitatearth.org. By now we all know about climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity. But let’s suppose we no longer repress and destroy nature but collaborate with it? Suppose we organize our society in a way so that all other organisms around us also have the space to live? Suppose that with our things we contribute to the availability of healthy air, clean water and fertile soil? Suppose we live in a harmonious, symbiotic relationship with nature? The following 24 artists are featured in the exhibition: Barbara Andrus, June August, Joe Caruso, Barbara Eskin, Phyllis Ewen, Barbara Fletcher, Gillian Frazier, Philip Gerstein, Raymond Gilbert, Mags Harries, Amy Hourihan, Joel Janowitz, Susan Jaworski-Stranc, Joseph Lieberman, CJ Lori, Preetha Mahadevan, Sally B. Moore, Marsha Nouritza Odabashian, Lisa Reindorf, Erin Starr, Joanne Tarlin, Niamh Ultaigh, Carter Wentworth and Sharon Whitham

A successful reception at Marblehead Gallery: ARTI

 

Having a grand time with fellow printmaker, 

Susan Dosick

 Here are my prints that are being exhibited.

Coyote Sensation, color reduction linoleum

Monhegan Island Series, color reduction linoleum

Mellow Marshlands for Hard Shells, reduction lino

After a very successful opening, we were invited over to fellow printmaker, Amy and her husband, Seamus Hourihan's gorgeous Marblehead home. A delicious buffet was prepared for us and we had great conversations around the dining room table.  Later in the evening we were invited up to their home's widow's walk that overlooks Marblehead harbor and beyond. Gloucester, in the distance, was pointed out to us.  What a view!   I hope you check out this amazing show of talented printmakers.

Print Show in newly established Marblehead Gallery

 

Opening ARTI Gallery Saturday, May 27, 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm   Welcome to the new ARTI Gallery in Marblehead. 70 Washington Street, Marblehead, MA 01945 Informal reception starting at 4:00 pm to toast with TJ and Arend. Come see our new space, as well as a sneak peak at the amazing work of our first artists: the North of Boston Print Collaborative.  CHECK OUT THE ARTI WEBSITE     Exhibit Opening: North of Boston Print Collaborative Reception: Saturday, May 27, 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm  Exhibit runs through June 11, 2023   In the highly technical world of contemporary print media, fine art printmakers continue to find inspiration in techniques that are centuries old, often in combination with 21st century methods "Coyote Sensations", S. Jaworski Stranc Artists of the NBPC work in a variety of methods, including woodcut and reduction linoleum, monotype and monoprint, etching, mezzotint, lithograph, collagraph, and mixed media Participating artists include: Muriel Angelil, Michele Champion, Sally Dion, Sue Dosick, Diane Francis, Kate Higley, Amy Hourihan, Susan Jaworski-Stranc, Barbara Nachmias-Kedesdy, Mary Pollak, Kathleen Reming, Christine Riccardi, Christine Robinson and Mary Carolyn Webber.  CHECK OUT THE FULL EXHIBIT     ARTI  70 Washington Street, Marblehead, Massachusetts  United States

Turbulent Remains

 

TURBULENT REMAINS:

3 Women explore the boundaries of Climate Change,

Erica Flores, Gillian Frazier, Susan Jaworski Stranc

at the Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery

Bunker Hill Community College

Charlestown Campus

250 Rutherford Avenue

Boston, MA

now through April 28, 2023

The NH mountains were snow white but not Sugar Hill

 After a COVID hiatus of a few years, our merry band of plein air painters headed for Sunset Hill House in Sugar Hill, NH https://www.thesunsethillhouse.com/ for the annual winter gathering.  Unfortunately, February temperatures were unseasonably warm and in the 40's, with a shrinking snow cover on the Hotel's premises. The distant range of the White Mountains to the east and the Green Mountains of Vermont in the west seen from our hotel were still covered in a white blanket of packed snow though. Every morning the sunrise over the White Mountains never failed to present a colorful palette to our waking eyes.

At the start of the day most of the painters walked out from the classroom porch and within a few feet set up their easels. Others chose to hike a bit to find other vistas to paint and still others hopped in their cars and sought farther points of interests.

The above three, 12x16 oil sketches are what I painted during my 3 day stay: two are scenes from the premises and the other is painted along the frozen Ham Branch Gale River a short drive from hotel.  All finished during an outdoor session of no more than two or three hours. 

One afternoon another artist and I decided to travel to the beautifully detailed and well maintained Sugar Hill Community Church not far from our hotel. I always liked looking at the simple architecture of New England's steepled wooden houses of worship. Most difficult to draw it's entirety on a 8x10 sheet of paper when the foundation is always the starting point for a drawing. So from the back of my car I looked skyward and focused on drawing just the steeple using General's charcoal pencils and kneaded eraser.  Soon the fast disappearing sun was making the winter temperature difficult to work in, so I drew two more charcoal drawings before heading back for dinner.

Having dinner together at a local restaurant. Look at all those rosy cheeks. Ah fresh air!

Here's the communal lunch and snack table in the classroom basement. Such a wide assortment of foods for sharing!  Nourishment is very important to an outdoor painter.

Once home and rested, I played with my artwork on the computer using filters with interesting results: what was painted in colors, now is rendered in black and white & what was once a b/w charcoal drawing is now colorized. 

OUTSIDE SKETCHING

Along Point Shore along the Merrimac River, in Amesbury there is a business called Lowell Boat Shop. Established in 1793, this wooden boat building shop is the oldest operating boat shop in America. I have spent many outings there, sketching the multitude of boats found on the property: most are sea worthy, some not.  The stacked formations of these crafts make very interesting compositions.

While out drawing one morning, a Newburyport Daily News photographer stopped by for a chat and asked if I would mind him taking pics while I worked. The temps were in the 20's, so I was properly attired as only an outdoor artist could be dressed in layers of clothing, hats, scarf and a blanket for my lap.

Recently I have been making pronto plates, a type of lithography process, from my Lowell Boat Shop charcoal drawings. 

Drawing directly on a polyester plate using China markers, Litho pencils and Sharpies, I can closely replicate the marks and tones of the original charcoal drawings. The plate is then inked up using a brayer while the surface of the undrawn plate is kept wet by sponging on a solution of gum arabic and water. The basic principle to lithography is water and oil do not mix. They repel each other.  Using an etching press, I offset the image onto printing paper. 

There is so much more to learn about this new printmaking process. Experimenting over time will lead to more interesting results.