#printmaking – Page 2

July 28, 2024December 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Spiritual World at RAINRAIN

Photo story

Installation view, photo courtesy of the gallery

Spiritual World, the title of the current group show at RAINRAIN, references Alfred Stieglitz’s Spiritual America, a 1923 photograph of a harnessed, castrated horse. The powerless restrained stallion—a traditional American symbol of unstoppable prowess—symbolized for Stieglitz the loss of spirituality in his contemporary American culture. The organizer of Spiritual World, Theodor Nymark, a Copenhagen-based artist who also shows work in it, brought together seven artists from Denmark, Korea, and the USA to explore how spirituality can exist today outside conservative religious ideals and ultra-liberal new-age paganism. In a text for the show, Nymark specifies further how he sees spirituality—”like a multifaceted metaphor, many-sided, a prism with no central outpost, only imagination. Not just a lake, a mirror. Not just a car, a vehicle.” These notions reflect the overall premise of this show.

June 4, 2024June 9, 2024, by Yindi Chen

Womanhood 102: Lesley Bodzy and Katie Commodore Challenge Gender Norms

Installation view *Womanhood 102* (with Lesley Bodzy’s *Soft Embrace I*, 2022. Acrylic. 69 x 43 x 11 inches, on the left and works by Katie Commodore in the middle and on the right). Courtesy of the curator.

A golden, shimmering drapery cascades from the wall—the skin-like surface of Soft Embrace is from Lesley Bodzy’s experimental work with acrylic paint. She uses the liquid pigment as a sculptural material, shaped into a malleable cloth, reminding of Lynda Benglis’s poured latex on the floor or Eva Hesse’s visceral and alluring sculptures. The sensuous object evokes a tactile experience, an imagination of how touching it might feel, through looking. Matter surprises, entering a threshold between fluid and solid, elasticity and delicacy. Jamaica Kincaid’s 1978 story Girl tells a mother-daughter dispute about how a girl should behave. “…on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming…” The mother’s advice seems endless and castigating, instructing every aspect of daily living. Side-by-side, Bodzy’s curved drapery recalls ‘how girls should behave,’ as it seemingly hides things beneath and its smooth surface presents an image of flawless elegancy, concealing feelings in a muted position.

May 6, 2024December 7, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Jeanne Ciravolo – the resistance in making do

In Dialogue

A person standing in front of a wall with paintings

Description automatically generated — Residency at the Anderson Center, 2019, Red Wing, MN

In her mixed-media work, Jeanne Ciravolo integrates collage, print, and stitching, materializing the stories of her female relatives—their stories of loss and hope. The female figures often reference representation of women in art history, such as medieval carvings or paintings from the Renaissance. The figure imagery is based on Ciravolo’s sketches, figure drawings, photos from newspapers and magazines, or photos she took.

April 15, 2024April 9, 2024, by Art Spiel

Simona Prives: towards the noise of dark waters at PRACTICE

Photo Story

Simona Prives’s latest installation at Philadelphia’s PRACTICE Gallery, towards the noise of dark waters, combines projection and collage to explore themes of renewal and decay. This site-specific installation by the Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist features life-sized projections of collages built upon densely packed drawings, ink paintings, and various printmaking techniques. These collages suggest maps, geological patterns, and industrial imagery, creating abstract yet recognizable worlds.

April 12, 2024March 29, 2024, by Hovey Brock

Tatiana Arocha: Mama Coca

Hot Air

*Hojas en movimiento sobre el fuego [Leaves in motion over the fire]*, 2023. Soft Ground etching on Hahnemühle and pigment print on Kozo paper, hand-painted with acrylic. Triptych, each 35 1/4 x 26 1/2 inches. Photograph by Etienne Frossard

Tatiana Arocha is a Brooklyn-based artist whose practice has focused on installations that include rubbings, photographs, and drawings of plants and landscapes taken from the many ecological niches of her native Colombia. Increasingly, her art and advocacy have focused on the coca plant, notorious for its role in the war on drugs, which has destroyed indigenous communities and their territories across South America. Informed by her research, her current installations and publications highlight the coca plant’s ceremonial role in the indigenous cultures that cultivate it, pushing back on the demonization it has endured in the West. Her work also suggests new avenues for how the plant can be a force for good in the Global North and South.

March 18, 2024March 18, 2024, by Art Spiel

Way finding: Caroline Burton at the New Jersey State Museum

In Dialogue

Installation view of *Caroline Burton: Way Finding* at the New Jersey State Museum (September 23, 2023 – March 31, 2024). Photo courtesy of Sarah Vogelman

The New Jersey State Museum, part of the NJ Department of State, has served the public for nearly 130 years, showcasing diverse collections in Archaeology & Ethnography, Cultural History, Fine Art, and Natural History. Assistant curator Sarah Vogelman dedicates herself to the Fine Art collection, focusing on its care, expansion, and exhibition. With over 12,000 works, the collection emphasizes American art and notably highlights New Jersey artists, positioning their contributions within the broader American art history context. Through the New Jersey Artist Series, featuring exhibitions like Caroline Burton: Way Finding, Vogelman aims to spotlight New Jersey’s vibrant contemporary art scene and foster local artist collaboration. By curating this series and organizing exhibitions that offer wider or even global art historical perspectives, she strives to convey that New Jersey’s art is a vital part of a broader cultural dialogue. “I want our visitors to see that art from New Jersey transcends our state’s borders,” says Vogelman.

March 7, 2024March 2, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Salted not Sugared at Ben Shahn Center

In Dialogue

A round yellow and black object with a red dot on it Description automatically generated — Andrew Cornell Robinson, glazed porcelain, with underglaze silkscreen print decal transfer, 16 x 16 x 3 inches. Photographer Martin Meyers, 2024

Andrew Cornell Robinson, the 2023 grand prize winner of the William Patterson University Galleries’ national juried printmaking exhibition, Ink, Press, Repeat, presents a decade of exploration in his exhibition, Salted Not Sugared. This retrospective, the first extensive survey of his interdisciplinary art, is showcased at the Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts, curated by Casey Mathern. His work, spanning oil painting, printing, drawing, and assemblage, engages with queer and peculiar revisionist histories, inviting viewers into a reflective dialogue where personal histories, social narratives, and abstract forms converge.

February 5, 2024January 13, 2024, by Amy Talluto

Amy Talluto Describes a Munch Print – Towards the Forest II

Meditation on a Munch Print

A painting of a person hugging a forest

Description automatically generated — Towards the Forest II 1915 Color Woodcut, 20 x 25.5 in (65 x 50 cm), (Exhibited at *Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth* at the Clark Art Institute)

“An eyewitness described Edvard Munch supervising the print of a colour lithograph in 1896. He stood in front of the stones on which the head of a masterpiece was drawn. He then closed his eyes tightly, stabbed the air with his finger, and gave his instructions. ‘Print… grey, green, blue, brown.’ Then he opened his eyes and remarked, ‘Now it’s time for a glass of schnapps.’ The whole performance, including the air of melodrama and that shot of spirits, was highly characteristic.”

-Martin Gayford, The Spectator

January 19, 2024January 18, 2024, by Art Spiel

Ceramics+ Drawing Into Sculpture at LIC

photo story

A colorful paper ball with barbed wire

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — Sok Song,- SoNoBe: Legermain Barbed and Coiled. Clay, paper, plastic, 16”x16”x16”.2023, Me, Mom, and the War on Identity. Acrylic, screen print, collage on paper, 36”x28” 2023 ( on wall)

The Long Island City Artists, an art non-profit known as LIC-A, is currently presenting a bold exhibition that brings together artists who work simultaneously in two media not always thought of as compatible. Curator Matt Nolen has gathered a fascinating group of artists from the NYC metropolitan area who work in both clay and drawing–one influencing and bouncing off the other. The synthesis is a fascinating and genre-bending exhibition.

October 23, 2023October 14, 2023, by Art Spiel

The Mirror Blue Night at Undercroft Gallery

Featured Project

A room with art on the wall

Description automatically generated

The Mirror Blue Night originated from an idea artist and curator Patrick Neal had for a show called Dark Noir, referencing the character of the city in the evening hours. When Neal was later invited to curate at the Undercroft Gallery, this idea expanded to include nocturnes and night in general. The gallery is located beneath The Church of Heavenly Rest on Museum Mile, and in this context, Neal began to look for spiritual echoes, considering how evening and twilight hours evoke the afterlife, the cosmos, anonymity, peace, and fear. “I had in mind depictions of darkness but also considered night as a condition that occupies half of our days and half of our lives, with all the symbolic, psychological, and temporal associations that come with it.”