Signs of Spring: Trillium in Ithaca, NY
2019
Time out to celebrate the arrival of Spring. Take a deep breath and then plunge ahead. This month is fulfilling in many ways. The change in weather means more sunlight, and flowers respond!
Time also for an opening of an exhibition that I have been planning on for months at the Corners Gallery up in Cayuga Heights, Ithaca, New York.
Alan Singer pictured pulling a print edition for The Print Club of Rochester
I am a printmaker, painter and Professor of Art at R.I.T. and I have curated the show called "Process and Purpose, 2019". Included in the new show at Corners Gallery are eight contemporary printmakers who all have a story to tell in each individual work on display. We had a great crowd at the opening and all of the artists were in attendance.
Minna Resnick, one of our printmakers at the opening
There are established relationships between the artists of friendship and community and there is also a conversation between the artworks on view. Maybe it is color, or maybe it is the mood expressed but each print is engaging as a composition worth your attention. Don't mistake these prints for illustration though, the artists have built a deeper concept built from their experience.
It is rewarding to take the time and really see what the artists are dealing with. In our show along with their art each printmaker has a verbal statement to make in support of their endeavors. An artist like Nick Ruth comes back again and again to his statement dealing with communication using an image of a cell tower to get us to stop and think about how we have come to rely on devices for conversation.
Nick Ruth at Corners Gallery
The daily news about Climate Change and striking images of forest fires out west bring into deeper focus the issues that printmaker Craig Mains has made with his work. His giant woodcut features a lumber truck making the last haul. Is that because there are no more trees to cut down; have the forest fires consumed them?
Craig Mains large woodcut deals with current issues...
Eileen Bushnell's small mixed media prints are like little science experiments, figures are falling and spells are broken. There is a reliance on elemental charts that tell us about our atomic structures and how we can relate. You could say that Eileen Bushnell's theme is a quest for knowledge. Having a second sense of what that knowledge may bring - that is the job of this artist - to find it and hopefully harmonize!
Eleen Bushnell's print - "Akiko and the Buddha"
Minna Redneck's prints are sophisticated image making at its best, with delicate values that come close to photographic depth. "Avoid Meaningless Words" is one title, and it is a mediation perhaps on childhood, looking back on a life well lived through the eyes of an artist. Childhood joys are juxtaposed against more mature pursuits with a recognition of being judged through observation.
Minna Resnick at Corners Gallery
These are some of my thoughts about the ways these prints on view in "Process and Purpose, 2019" may cause a reaction from a viewer. Several of the prints in our show are purely abstract, like those by the artist Kumi Korf. She and I attended graduate school at Cornell University during the early 1970s and we share some history in our relations to art and that can become something of a signifier.
Kumi Korf and friend at the opening of "Process & Purpose, 2019"
Sarah Kinard and Shane Durgee are the youngest folks in this group of eight printmakers. Sarah has a way with the fragments she collects and uses, but in her woodcut "Razzle Dazzle" she has a graphic vortex of energy that holds a viewer's attention. Shane also has that energy and the bright colors of his transfer prints have a tactile depth.
Sarah Kinard at Corners Gallery
Shane Durgee, transfer print with over painting
My prints in this show engage with striking colors that seem to glow. I have an engagement with geometry and with the translation of mathematics into something you can see and feel. My new prints embody a search for new ways of expressing myself, but I never thought that you could use algebra to create images like what I am doing today. Come out and see our show, I think we are on to something here.!
Alan Singer's print called: " Nirvana"
in
"Process and Purpose, 2019"
at
Corners Gallery, Ithaca, New York
thru June 22, 2019
