Sustenance: Progressive Printmaking Now an exhibition curated by Andrea L. Ferber and Monika M. Meler

Sustenance: Progressive Printmaking Now

March 21– April 13, 2013 curated by Andrea L. Ferber and Monika M. Meler

RedLine Gallery 1422 N. 4th Street

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 53212, U.S.A. redlinemke@gmail.com

redlineartmke.org directors: Lori Bauman and Steve Vande Zande

This catalog published in conjunction

with the exhibition Sustenance: Progressive Printmaking Now authors: Andrea L. Ferber and Monika M. Meler

editor and designer: Andrea L. Ferber

All images courtesy the artists Photography by Andrea L. Ferber

copyright © 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from Andrea L. Ferber.

participating artists:

Anna Cox and Kerri Cushman Waldek Dynerman

Melissa Gill John Hitchcock

Mary Hood Ina Kaur

Monika Meler Jessica Meuninck–Ganger

Phyllis McGibbon Kristina Paabus

Ryan Parker Kathryn Reeves Meredith Setser Megan St. Clair

Fahimeh Vahdat Rina Yoon

Many special thanks to Rina Yoon Lori Bauman Steve Vande Zande Melanie Aiens Ann Wydeven Aeran Park and Meredith Setser.

Sustainability has become a catch phrase, widely used to describe any effort towards autonomy: a sustainable building regenerates its own electricity, a sustainable economy provides long-term support for a population, and a sustainable environment requires no external provisions for health and longevity. The sustainability of a medium requires continuous and creative experimentation through generations of artists. Some mediums have nearly died out, or have at minimum moved to the margins of practice; some examples include fresco painting, mezzotint, calotype, daguerreotype, cliché-verre, and even film. New methods replace older ones, often accompanied by extreme protestations among loyalists. Perhaps nowhere is this more prevalent than the field of printmaking, where the definitions of “traditional” practices are continuously challenged. This exhibition highlights artists who keep their medium alive—and their audiences guessing—through unconventional methods that maintain printmaking’s experimental status. There is a kind of inherent irony in the process of establishing sustainability: the goal is autonomy, but the innovation required to reach new ends necessitates interdisciplinarity. Thus print artists employ methods and materials from drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography to further establish the arena of printmaking. Traditionally printmaking was defined by its ability to produce multiples, usually in the form of editions. Yet the work in this exhibit demonstrates that at the most basic level, the transfer process defines printmaking. Most of the artists represented here reject editioning, instead creating unique impressions, and often combine print processes. Syncretism usurps purity.

1

Anna Cox

b. 1971 Knoxville, Tennessee

Kerri Cushman b. 1966 Oshkosh, Wisconsin

kerricushman.com

StreetView, 2013 Viewmaster reel, wood, slide film,

letterpress-printed handmade abaca & recycled clothing paper (7” x 7” x 4” [closed]; 7” x 14” x 9” [open])

This installation consists of twenty-four frames covered with stretched, handmade paper and a box-like book with a built-in ViewMaster. The latter, a plastic stereoscope popular in past decades, holds a reel with photographs by Cox. The photos were taken specifically for this project and capture urban tourist areas. As the artists explain:

these saturated images depict people confronting figurative or literal borders in heavily touristed cities like New York, Paris, and Berlin. Many of the Berlin images were taken standing in (former) East Germany and looking towards (former) West Germany. In the reel, people cross bridges and play in parks that straddle former communist spaces.

StreetView is a direct response to a car bomb explosion in Baghdad on March 5, 2007. The grey and black tones of the paper reference ash and smoke. This horrific tragedy killed 26 people on Al-Mutanabbi Street, which is well-known for its bookstores and intellectual community. Cox’s photos of urban spaces in the ViewMaster imagine a reconstructed street, safe and vibrant for local Iraqis. The shapes and images in Cushman’s handmade paper derive from the photographs, and the systematic organization of squares suggests building blocks. Thus the work serves as both a memorial to a single tragedy and an optimistic vision for the potential rejuvenation of all war-torn regions.

2

3

Waldek Dynerman b. 1951 Warsaw, Poland

dynerman.com

Knifed, 2011 collagraph (47” x 123.5”)

Ejected, 2011

collagraph (38” x 49”) One of the most prolific artists working today, Waldek Dynerman uses a variety of mediums, including sculpture, drawing, and printmaking; with the latter he typically employs collograph, a process based on imprinting textured plates. His work is rooted in his experience as the child of Holocaust survivors and often features distorted and fragmented bodies. This artist cuts apart his collograph plates, allowing him to ink pieces separately but print in one run. This jigsaw puzzle approach leaves crude white gaps between objects and questions the stability of the matrix, mirroring the precarious status of the figures in the prints. As is evident in the two prints in this show, he combines human and machine parts to create cyborg-like creatures. Do these monsters have souls? Can they think for themselves? Are they programmed to kill? These questions draw an obvious parallel to human behavior, especially during times of war. Both Knifed and Ejected also include dirty grey clouds of smoke against coal-black skies. The human arms reaching out from these suggest death by incineration; bodies turning into ash and soot.

4

Knifed

Ejected 5

Melissa Gill b. 1972 Tucson, Arizona

melissagillart.com

Ocean, 2013 stencil monoprint, watercolor, colored pencil (47.5 ” x 24”)

Melissa Gill’s work has always focused on some aspect of the figure, in particular hands, and is created by layering numerous colors and matrices. A visit to New Dehli in 2011 motivated the artist to create installations in the format of Buddhist prayer flags, which are strung together and hung over blessed areas. She was also stimulated by stencils used for mehndi, intricate designs that traditionally decorate the palms and feet of Hindu brides. Ocean is comprised of six rectangular panels printed on both sides and loosely stitched together; in this exhibit it is suspended from the ceiling. Subtle movements from shifts in air flow parallel Gill’s subdued palette. Whereas layers of color often result in a dark, weighted tenor, this artist manages to maintain a feeling of lightness and ephemerality. Many of the patterns come from printing embossed paper, another method she developed after discovering this material in India. The wave-like motifs on each panel reference meditative states, further reinforcing a preoccupation with the spiritual.

6

7

John Hitchcock b. 1967 Lawton, Oklahoma

hybridpress.net

Epicentro, 2011-13 screenprint on felt (20’ x 20’ x 10’)

This large, symmetrical installation features numerous screenprinted felt pieces laid out on the floor and in a pile as well as on flagpoles. Hitchcock’s images include a bison skull, a tank, an owl and a deer head. Owls screenprinted on paper are arranged in an “x” formation over some of the felt cut-outs. All felt and paper are black with silver ink. The artist writes that his primary concerns are war and the fragility of life; Epicentro suggests a memorial to death. Hitchcock is Comanche and Kiowa and grew up in Oklahoma, where the Plains tribes were nearly exterminated because the U.S. military massacred them and their food sources. The artist blurs boundaries between personal and community history: he was raised with a myth that owls came near and hooted as an omen that someone was going to die. The pile of animal skulls signifies the millions of buffalo that were slaughtered en masse only for their hides. Though tanks were not developed at this time, the cold, unflinching killing machines are an apt symbol of this genocide that is not always recognized as a war.

8

9

Mary Hood b. 1966 Milwaukee, Wisconsin

hoodmary.com

Fleeting Knowledge, 2010 84 books of handmade paper, ink, wood (each 2” x 3” x 3”)

10 nests of copper wire, silk tissue, ink (each 8” x 8” x 6”) Books are typically created for a single person’s intimate experience: a reader holds the book close and absorbs its contents in silence. Mary Hood’s installations incorporating books exchange this method of consumption for a more public yet inaccessible one; here, numerous tiny books attached to wooden blocks are splayed open but attached to walls. The plethora of delicate pages cast dramatic shadows and appear much like a flock of birds in flight. Their pages are lithograph-printed with symbols and quotes denoting one of twelve alchemical phases: Calcinatio (calcination or to heat), Solutio (dissolution), Separatio (separation), Conjunctio (to conjoin), Putrefactio (putrifaction), Cdagulatio (coagulation), Cibatio (to feed), Sublimatio (sublimation or distillation), Fixatio (fixation), Exaltatio(to enhance), Augmentatio (augmention), and Projectio (projection). (Each phase is repeated exponentially by one; there is one book representing Calcinatio, two representing Solutio, and so on.) Fragile spheres hang among the books like wasp nests. Hood’s installation suggests the passing of outdated, esoteric knowledge but also prompts curiosity about lost wisdom that becomes scattered and out of reach.

10

11

Ina Kaur b. 1980 New Dehli, India

inakaur.com

Broken Link II, 2010 printed wood on painted wall

(logs 15” in diameter, painted rectangle 2’ x 7’) Broken Link II consists of three tree trunk sections hung on a vibrant red painted rectangle. Each segment of wood has been carved with traditional relief tools to create patterns reminiscent of mendhi arabesques. The artist then inked the reliefs with a brayer, but displayed the matrices rather than the prints they could have made. The resulting work integrates the oldest printmaking process and a contemporary method: installation, and juxtaposes natural materials with organic patterns against a rigid, minimal, geometric shape. Its aesthetic pivots on tensions: irregular cracks in the wood and nuances in the bark framing each circle appear quiet yet lively, while the loud red—often connoting blood or danger—remains still and resolute. Kaur’s work frequently engages concepts of hybridity and confluence, especially as metaphors of individual and social identity.

12

13

Monika Meler

b. 1981 Brodnica, Poland monikameler.net

Do Gory, Dla Derka (2010)

diffused relief monotype (32.5” x 60.5”)

Ciagnie Mnie Tam (2010) diffused relief monotype (34” x 62.5”)

Monika Meler has gained much attention for her unique process, though her content is equally riveting. Sometimes called pressure printing, she discovered an alternative method by inking and impressing the back of a relief woodblock. Then she began using cut mat board matrices underneath paper, rolling ink with a very large brayer over the top. Each side of these prints is layered fifteen to twenty-five times, and they are hung for viewers to see both sides. The resulting sumptuous color emerges from darkness to create much depth. Though her forms are amorphous, she typically has an object in mind when cutting. Communist architecture is a primary source, a reflection of nostalgia for her childhood in a communist country. Meler’s practice is driven largely by personal experiences; while she does not define distinct series of works in her career, her palette and matrices change with phases in everyday life.

14

Do Gory, Dla Derka

Ciagnie Mnie Tam

15

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger b. 1972 Walkerton, Indiana

jessicameuninck.com

Position/Opposition (series), 2011-present etching and aquatint on surface-sized translucent Thai mulberry paper,

print assemblage The four panels included in this exhibit are an excerpt of this artist’s etchings on semitransparent and layered papers. Its format brings together hanging scrolls, collage, and pages of a book, and can be displayed in a myriad of ways. Multiple faces appear to argue with one another, suggesting a loud silence. The artist cut around some characters, playing with edges like some paintings by Elizabeth Murray and Frank Stella. Displayed in windows, the group is contexualized against an urban, industrial and constantly changing setting. Though her subjects are compressed into small spaces, they do not seem to relate; hands reach out but never fully engage, and intense gazes are not returned. While worlds apart stylistically, the existential atmospheres, focus on human psychology, and implication of narrative relate the artist’s practice to that of the German Expressionists in that both are visual meditations on contemporary alienation.

16

17

Phyllis McGibbon b. 1961 Madison, Wisconsin

Four Meditations for St. Veronica, 2007-2013

mixed media This artist has been motivated for many years by Albrecht Dürer’s prints. For this piece she appropriated a segment of Christ Carrying the Cross, a woodcut from 1509. Catholic tradition maintains that a woman named Veronica wiped sweat from Christ’s brow with a cloth as he suffered on the path to Calvary. His face was miraculously transferred onto the fabric, and the encounter became one of the stations of the cross. Four Meditations is composed of four scrolls of golden, sheer fabric onto which McGibbon rubbed an embossed cylinder with graphite. The impressions are barely visible and only a hand is easily identifiable. These pieces of fabric are suspended from printing brayers that have been covered with smooth copper cylinders, and each cradles a printed Plexiglas rectangle at the bottom, which also holds the fragmented image. Though St. Augustine of Hippo is regarded as the patron saint of printers, and Veronica the patron saint of photography, the latter’s relationship to transferred images is clear. As the artist explains, “[Veronica’s] legendary gesture is…relevant to those of us making prints based on the instinct—the need—to touch. I am motivated by [her] compassion and the thought that her reach should be endlessly echoed and extended…[My cylinders relate to] prayer wheels, cylindrical seals, braille, and the many ways that the empathic impulse travels across time.”

18

19

Kristina Paabus b. 1976 Haverhill, Massachusetts

kristinapaabus.com

and so on, 2013 screenprint and spray paint on wood panels (47” x 45”)

Kristina Paabus’ work combines sculpture and printmaking. Here, nine double-sided panels rest on the floor and come out into the viewer’s space. Some of their shapes suggest tombstones or skateboards, and each is stenciled with a unique, irregular pattern much like geologic striations. The panels, mostly grey but one fluorescent orange, also look like fragments of destroyed buildings. Notably, Paabus’ arrangement is intentional. The artist’s output in all mediums might be described as irrationally scientific, or diagrams and systems gone haywire.

20

21

Ryan Parker b. 1981 Lake Havasu, Arizona

ryan-parker.com

Corner, 2009 screenprint and monoprint on mylar collage (4 panels, variable sizes)

Ryan Parker derives his structural forms from both virtual first-person shooting games and architecture, the latter especially from his experience living in Rome for a year. He works primarily in screenprinting, etching, and textile design. These four monoprints on mylar were installed in RedLine’s windows to emphasize their milky luminosity. Like Jessica Meuninck-Ganger’s prints in this show, Parker’s interact with an urban background and changing light and atmosphere outside (they were especially compelling during a snowstorm). An array of implied textures and spaces are achieved through varied markmaking and overlapping layers of ink. The artist’s patterns originate in digital form, a reversal of many processes, and he sees nuances and irregularities as mirroring computer failures.

22

23

Kathryn Reeves b. 1952 USA

Snow and Crocus, 2012

multipass digital print on Johannot cotton paper (12” x 28.75”)

Moss in Shadow, 2012 multipass digital print on Johannot cotton paper (12” x 28.75”)

These two prints work as a diptych, mirroring a geometric, cell-like pattern reminiscent of a genome map. Reeves is inspired by fractal geometry and boundaries between nature and artificial paths in gardens. Her multi-layered compositions push organic shapes towards the structural. Previous work confronted highly politicized issues, and while this subject is markedly different, the artist maintains a great sensitivity to color. These imagined environs reflect a fascination with changes in light and atmosphere; the aesthetic results are dramatically different but this conceptual preoccupation relates Reeves to the Impressionists. Though considered conventional today, the Impressionists’ work was cutting edge in its day, much like the contested status of digital prints.

24

Snow and Crocus

Moss in Shadow 25

Meredith Setser b. 1974 Wyandotte, Michigan

meredithsetser.com

Germinal Diaspora, 2013 etching and screenprinting on handmade felt and wood

This rhizomatic installation seems to have grown over the yellow-grey brick wall and worn wooden floor of the gallery. Its center features a group of soft white stalagmites emerging from a concentration of printed felt pieces. Most are flat and diamond-shaped, stitched in a checkerboard pattern; others are floral and some smaller forms look very much like sushi. Meredith Setser finds pleasure in making felt, onto which she prints patterns of crop circles, labyrinths, and other symbols that “represent the human tendency towards organization and our need to control and alter our environments to suit religious, economic, or social purposes.” These predetermined motifs contrast the wildly anarchic presentation, which the artist determines intuitively with each iteration. Here, some pieced felt elements were hung from the ceiling to form a quilt-like wall hugging the left side of the floor arrangement. Placed in the back of the gallery, this creates an otherworldly niche, and the raised center of the piece seems a secret altar to an unknown religion.

26

27

Megan St. Clair b. 1982 Newton, Kansas

When it Gets Cold, 2011

artist book with monotype, screenprint, and charcoal (14’ x 96”) Megan St. Clair’s deeply personal work confronts past trauma stemming from drug addiction. This artist’s book mediates on how a simple encounter such as a taste of coffee brings back memories of shooting heroin. St. Clair experienced a long and extraordinarily difficult recovery during which she had to work through desires for rigidity and control. Monoprinting with highly viscous, diluted ink forced her to accept messes and visual anarchy. Repetitious phrases reveal obsessive thoughts. Though the manner in which this work is exhibited is not pre-determined, its presentation on a long red cloth connotes blood and a shrouded coffin. As the artist explains, her artistic practice centers on femaleness and the abject as well as fears of frailty and deterioration.

28

29

Fahimeh Vahdat American, b. 1959 Iran

fahimehvahdat.com

One Million Signature Campaign for Equal Rights, 2009-2013 canvas, fabric, mixed media print installation (240” x 84”)

This powerful banner hangs from the ceiling and flows onto the gallery floor like an elaborate train on a dress. Twenty printed medallions framing portraits of imprisoned female Iranian intellectuals cascade down a center panel. The front is veiled by two sheer red curtains and the back features white and green tulle—the colors of the Iranian flag. Abundant with symbolism, this work cannot be understood without some knowledge of the political situation in Iran and the artist’s status as an exiled individual. An increasingly oppressive theocracy has been in power since 1979. Vahdat writes:

In recent years, Iran’s many prisons and detention centers have been packed with civil rights activists, human rights defenders, students, lawyers, women’s rights activists, journalists, and ethnic and religious minorities––many of them women. Since 2006 many of these courageous women launched a “One Million Signature Campaign” demanding changes to discriminatory laws against women in Iran... The effort involves a great risk for women who work diligently for change. In support of this campaign, I use the Persian phrase “Khodaya” which means “O God” to represent a signature. In all my work I have and I will continue to repeat this word over and over to add up to one million as a testimonial for the support of this cause.

The artist invites concerned viewers to support this cause by visiting www.we-change.org/english/

30

31

Rina Yoon b. 1965 Korea rinayoon.com

Earthbody 24, 2011

photopolymer gravure

Earthbody 27, 2011 photopolymer gravure

For her Earthbody series Rina Yoon set out to utilize photographic means—specifically photopolymer gravure—and images of her own body. Transferring photos onto a transparency, Yoon then alters the image by scratching before exposing it onto a plate. To date she has made over forty prints for the suite. The results are deep spaces with soft, abstracted body fragments emerging from darkness underneath wispy plant-like motifs. These are meditations, inspired by Buddhist philosophy, on the body’s transformation over time. The results are dramatic but usually imperceptible day-to-day, much like plant life cycles. Yoon understands the body as a vessel that receives change. The greatly abstracted, closed figures in Earthbody 24 hover above an elegant breeze of budding pods or tiny leaves, while the foreshortened figure in Earthbody 27 appears to gracefully swim toward the viewer through a veil of threads. The ambiguity and curious juxtapositions may bring to mind Surrealist photography, yet this series does not impart any hint of shock or discomfort. These prints are further removed from this connection in the rich, velvety surface of the paper, which contrasts the coldness of glossy photographs.

32

Earthbody 24Earthbody 24

Earthbody 24 Earthbody 27

33