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| THE AMERICAN COLOR PRINT SOCIETY
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Due Honor
Michael Lasuchin Prize to be given at The American Color Print Society’s 63rd National Open Print Exhibition
by Sabina Clarke
Dorothy Roschen and Victor Lasuchin, the wife and the brother of deceased renowned painter, printmaker, and highly respected professor of art, Michael Lasuchin, have established the first Michael Lasuchin Memorial Prize, a $1,000 honorarium in the artist’s name which will be presented at the American Color Print Society’s 63rd National Open Print Exhibition, Cheltenham Art Center, 439 Ashbourne Road in Cheltenham, PA.
Independent judging for the Lasuchin Prize will be by Anne Fabbri, a critic and curator and the former director of the Paley Design Center of Philadelphia University.
Michael Lasuchin’s contribution to the art of printmaking was both significant and profound. He was recognized both nationally and internationally and received more than 130 awards for his work, including honors from the American Color Print Society, of which he was a long-time member. Shortly before he died, Lasuchin was showing new works in the medium of digital printmaking.
An additional $100 award in Michael’s memory will be given by Mili Dunn Weiss. The judging for this award will be by Eileen Foti, assistant professor of art at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ.
Idaherma Williams, the president of the American Color Print Society and a watercolorist and wood block artist whose work is shown around the world, said, “I am really excited about this exhibition because it brings the best examples of printmaking to our area as well as the work of both young and established artists.”
For this 63rd juried open exhibition, ACPS is presenting a show with an international perspective. Members and selected artists from throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico as well as members from the Philadelphia area will show works in Lithography, Block Printing, Monotype, Etching, Intaglio and a variety of creative combinations.
Some of the artists whose work will be exhibited include Selma Bortner from Langhorne, PA, who works with colographs; Dr. Burton Wasserman from Glassboro, NJ, a digital printmaker; Jack Gerber, a lithographer from the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia; Yuji Hiratsuka from Corvallis, OR, who does etchings with colographs; Emily Barronian from Tacoma, WA, who does relief printmaking; Victor Lasuchin from the Germantown section of Philadelphia, a digital printmaker; Susan Talbott Hoffman, a lithographer from Thibodaux, LA; Joyce Harris Mayer, a digital printmaker from Medford, NJ; Mike Stephens, a wood block artist from Corpus Christi, TX; and Natalia Moroz from Waxhaw, NC, who does relief printing on linoleum.
The public is invited to the opening reception to meet the artists on Sunday, June 10 from 2-4:00 p.m. The juried exhibition will run through Friday, June 29.
When the original founding members of the American Color Print Society, met in 1939, they were artist revolutionaries. Their first organized show in 1940 at the Philadelphia Print Club, now the Print Center, opened printmaking to color and heralded the arrival of the contemporary American print.
Prior to that time, the typical print was a black and white etching with very little chance of a color print passing a jury. Today, ACPS accepts black and white prints, noting that black and white are colors. They have come the full circle.
The ACPS has a collection of prize-winning prints which are included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
The famous Philadelphia lithographer and internationally known artist Benton Spruance (1904-1967) was a member of the American Color Print Society.
A pioneer in color lithography, Spruance was highly acclaimed for his lithographs in black and white. His work is in many collections including the Library of Congress, the national gallery of Art, New York Public Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Pennsylvania Academy of Arts.
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