While you were lazing around the pool this summer, the students in Nathan Abel’s Alternative Methods to Printmaking pre-session course were busy making art. “”Underpressuretwentythreefiftythree”” is the long name for the small exhibit of artwork that was cranked out during the three-week pre-session. The exhibit, currently at the Lionel Rombach Gallery, displays an interesting mix of printmaking techniques and artists’ books.
“”It’s neat to see what printmaking techniques there are and what actual printmaking entails,”” said Johanna Ingram, a senior in Spanish literature.
The first lesson in printmaking is from Lisa Jablonski’s “”Chapter 1 Existence.”” Her work is created by adding little changes to the same background print, which is a drawing of a hand and a human heart. In the first phase these two stand alone, but as the phases continue small branches start to grow and bloom, then shed and are left bare. The blooming and wilting flowers seem to remind viewers that some things stay the same and some things change but there is always a chance for rebirth.
Diana Taylor’s “”Little Secrets”” stands on its own pedestal. It is comprised of hinged wooden panels that have been carved into different rooms in a house, such as the library, kitchen and hallway. Some parts on the panels can be opened and closed, like a pop-up book. The carved rooms are so lifelike and three-dimensional that they look like you are stepping into an old haunted house, peeling wallpaper and all. The hallway has three faded family portraits that stare at you creepily like sinister Mona Lisas.
“”It was different from all the other ones,”” said Ingram of Taylor’s work. “”It seemed well thought out, well-constructed. It reminded me how every family has things that are behind closed doors that only they know about.””
“”Untitled”” mixed media could describe any work of art nowadays, but Alice M. Vinson pulls off this title with her patchwork of handmade paper. Each square looks like a thin wool sponge and is decorated with layered photos and transparencies of natural things like birds, butterflies and leaves. Two panels have splayed-out, iridescent bird wings on them.
“”It’d make a kind of nice patchwork quilt, although it’s a little creepy at the same time,”” said Ingram. “”It was a little disturbing with the bird wings on it.””
While some of the artists’ books sit, ready to be read, some unfold and are hung on the wall, like Jorge Nasser’s “”Hoy May King.”” This is a clamshell box that has been nailed to the wall while accordion folded pages pop out and show images of a lady whose face slowly disappears. Nasser also created the unconventional “”El Campesino”” which features a homemade “”magic lantern.”” The magic lantern is a wooden box with a protruding lens that projects a yellowed image of a triangular landscape that may be a house.
“”On the whole, I liked the color schemes that they used,”” said Ingram of the entire exhibit. “”There weren’t colors that were really shocking to the eye. No complementary color schemes, it was all kind of soothing.””
The exhibit shows off the different ways that one medium can be transformed. From artist books to hanging prints, each work is loaded with emotion that comes off the page, ready to be consumed.
