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THE AMERICAN COLOR PRINT SOCIETY 68th Members Exhibition at Villanova University, Villanova, PA 800 Lancaster Avenue May 29 - July 23, 2009 Gift of Vision (For ICON) June 2009 CONFIGURATIONS IN FULL COLOR Burton Wasserman Ever since the dawn of art back in the time of the ancient cave painters, variations of color have been employed for descriptive and emotionally expressive purposes. Mesmerizing and richly varied, the endlessly differentiated notes of the spectrum attract our attention and provide art forms with a measure of power that can be bold or delicate or both. By their ability to keep our attention riveted to a given composition, they provide us with golden opportunities for deeply rewarding contact with art. All of these facts come into focus in the latest annual offering of The American Color Print Society. As one might expect, the organization continues in top form, strong as ever. The depth and range of the work on view is inspiring and eye-opening. This latest exhibition of recent work by members offers a lively group of exceptional graphic prints reflecting the many different esthetic viewpoints held by artists currently active in the field. And, as has always been the case with the Society, they each pursue a highly personal idiom, mutually plying their craft with appropriate panache and flawless grace. The current show of examples by Society participants is on view in the art gallery on the second floor of Connelly Center on the campus of Villanova University in Pennsylvania. It is set to run through July 23, 2009. Generally, original color prints consist of inks applied with the use of a matrix to paper. They may exist as printed editions ranging in size from a single impression to large runs of considerable numbers of a particular image. One of five principal procedures are employed for bringing a design to fulfillment. Specifically, they are relief techniques, intaglio methods, planographic approaches, stencil variations and digital processes. On rare occasions, artists may even combine two or more of these technical procedures in order to arrive at a single, unified composition. Natalia Moroz is represented by a handsome linocut titled Winter Branches. Made up of bare tree limbs, the print projects a stark presence of nature, deep in the midst of sleep. Alive with silent energies at rest, the overall design is an integrated composite with a muted atmosphere and a striking pattern of twigs stretching out in all directions. Jack Gerber’s Parade is an arrangement of circus performers and horses distributed horizontally across the surface of a lithograph. The figures are tightly cropped and carefully balanced in a scene filled with light and dark notes. They complement each other in overlapping shapes of blue. white, orange and yellow. Mili Dunn Weiss’ After Eden Series is a mixed media work in which dream-like glimpses of a figure, a feather, a flower and some anatomical details join each other like fragments in a dream. Out of these gossamer forms, a poetically charged mood rises up from the surface to become a hybrid mix of lyrical suggestions. Three nude figures fill the space articulated by Thelma Grobes’ The Umbrella. In a restrained scale of olive tones, the printed image is a subtle combination of reflections focusing on themes of introspection and femininity. The Big Wave, a print by Libby Newman, provides a great sweep of moving water at sea. Arching high and round, it is energized with a great rush of tidal power. At the same time, the image quivers with an aura of mystery. Its silent force creates a mystical state capable of generating a mood of awesome concentration. The total impact of the forms is incisive and transcendent. Notes of pistachio green as well as pale pink, black, blue, red and gold add up to a stirring vignette based on the figure of Eve encountered in Genesis as the evil serpent in the Garden of Paradise offers her a juicy apple. Her hand is poised in mid-air as she contemplates whether or not to accept the tempting fruit. A multicolored woodcut by Sheila Letven, the drama of the scene is both haunting and memorable. Highly compelling and entirely absorbing, the rest of the exhibition is an invitation to one’s heart, mind and eye that no visitor should afford to refuse. News Release Villanova University Art Gallery 800 Lancaster Avenue St. Mary’s Hall Villanova, PA 19085-1699 Website: www.artgallery.villanova.edu For Immediate Release For more information, contact Maryanne Erwin at 610-519-4612 Members of American Color Print Society To Present Wide-Ranging Work in Villanova Exhibit Villanova, PA – Though printmaking has been around for some thousands of years, it has been only within the past few hundred that it has come to be considered art over craft. And it’s only been within the last 69 years, when the Philadelphia-based American Colorprint Society (ACPS) forced the issue, that work in color joined its black and white counterparts in United States print exhibitions. Just how far the art form has come may be seen at the Villanova University Art Gallery when work by some 50 Society members in a broad range of print media go on exhibit. The Society’s “68th National Members’ Exhibit” opens May 29. A free reception to meet artists will take place on Friday, June 5, from 5 to 7 pm., in the gallery on the Villanova campus. The public is invited. Until 1940, juried print exhibits in the United States were limited to black and white work, typically etchings. Formed in 1939, the Society broke the color line the following year with the first juried show to welcome submissions in color. Current ACPS President Idaherma Williams of Princeton, NJ, promises the Villanova show to be a vibrant exhibit presenting United States printmaking at its varied best – black and white work included and welcome. The exhibit continues to July 23 and is supported in part by the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, the regional arts funding partnership of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In opening printmaking to the use of color, the pioneering ACPS members who entered work in the landmark 1940 exhibit “encouraged experimentation, which today has become part of our American art tradition,” the Journal of the Print World reported in its Fall 2006 issue. That experimentation “has extended to the materials and their combinations in printing: Oriental papers, rag papers, Arch papers, newspapers, even to printing on paper towels . . ,” the Journal noted. The Society’s exhibit at Villanova covers a spectrum of printmaking media from lithography to digital prints. Artists working with knife, gouge, chisel, stylus, acids, computers and other tools will offer original images printed from wood and linoleum to copper and zinc. Included will be work from reliefs, in which the print is created from inks, paints, dyes, and other agents adhering to the lines and contours of the surface left untouched by the artist; as well as intaglio prints – relief's opposite – engravings, etchings, aquatints and collographs in which the ink is carried in the furrows created by the artist rather than the high-standing surface. “As always, our members are working to make the Villanova exhibit as exciting as possible. Each of us is expected to turn out our very best work,” says ACPS President Williams. Having work judged by their peers is a requirement first to gain membership in the Society and for inclusion in the schedule of juried exhibits that the ACPS has been presenting across the United States for the past 69 years. The emphasis is on presenting new work for each. The emphasis on originality stems, in part, from printmaking's long road in gaining status as art. By the Renaissance a few fine artists, notably the German painter, draftsman and writer Albrecht Durer (1471 – 1528), developed printmaking techniques as a means of turning their drawing styles into graphics. But, as the work of transforming images into print was was left mostly to technicians, printmaking continued to be viewed as craft. Later, Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), noted for his etchings as well as his paintings, and Spain's Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828), an etcher and lithographer as well as a foremost painter of his time and beyond, did much to usher in the modern era of printmaking as art. By the 20th century many European master painters were also printmakers, doing original work directly on stone and plate as well as on their canvasses. In the United States, however, printmaking and painting remained dichotomous, with printmakers focusing on technical achievement rather than original themes, images and compositions. By the latter half of the 20th century, that changed substantially, with printmaking rapidly evolving into a medium of original creative expression. More and more printmakers became painters and painters printmakers looking to one medium to inform the other and advance their work in both. Indeed, most American Colorprint Society artists are both, including Idaherma Williams, though woodblock printing won her heart first, as a child: “I love every bit of the cutting, the tooling, the inking and printing process. When you get the results that you want, you think you're in heaven,” says the Society's president. The Society's code of originality requires that each work accepted for a juried exhibit must pass creative muster on principles recommended by the Print Council of America. “(1) The artist alone has created the master image in or upon the plate, stone, woodblock, collograph material or computer, for the purpose of creating the print. (2) The print is made from this original material, by the artist alone, or with a master printmaker. (3) The finished print is approved and signed by the artist.” As printmaking faced its long road to becoming accepted as art, neither do printmakers lightly accept new printmaking media, the most recent example being computer-generated digital prints. After due consideration over a period of years, it was determined that “the creative process is the same [with digital prints] as with artists working with traditional printmaking methods.” The Villanova University Art Gallery is open weekdays from 9 am. to 5 pm. For weekend and extended hours, and other information, telephone the Art Gallery at (610) 519-4612. Selected works for the “68th National Members Exhibit of the American Colorprint Society” may be previewed on the gallery’s website at www.artgallery.villanova.edu.