MAPC Review: "Print Matters, Printing Matters"

            We flourish in a world smothered of print. Whether we indulge in magazines or computer screens, imagery mesmerizes our focus. Printmaking rooted the history of art by the early 16^th century when print became accessible to the masses. It contributed to a greater means of understanding, thus the power of knowledge and communication thrived. Artists of the 21^st century continue to explore the traditional processes cultivated into the era of contemporary art. The Carnegie Center for Art and History hosted Mid America Print Council’s (MAPC) Juried Exhibition themed “Print Matters, Printing Matters.” Diverse with prints from 68 exceptional artists, MAPC’s hope of awareness and appreciation of traditional and contemporary printmaking was fulfilled as they encourage “printmakers remind us that we still live in a world surrounded by print media.”

Ramiro Rodriguez. Quemar y Callar (Burn and Silence Them).

            Ramiro Rodriguez applied the earliest form of printmaking known as woodcut, a type of relief print formerly popularized in the 15^th century. Quemar y Callar, or Burn and Silence Them, reiterates Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War and is directly referenced from an original plate. Bodies lay stacked, protruding in layers and crowd one another, consuming half of the work itself. A man and woman stand grinning before the dead in their solitude as the only breath of life within the print. The man’s hand effortlessly tosses a torch to the bodies below him. As if the torch were perpetually scratching the sky, its action held captive in the print permitted viewers with anticipation of the destructive brutalities of war.

Masha Schweitzer. The Air We Breathe VII.

            Further appropriated by the classics and similar to Rodriguez’ Quemar y Callar, Masha Schweitzer stimulates the mind’s consciousness in a new context of destruction. The Air We Breathe VII juxtaposes qualities of the human condition and its interdependence to the environment. Schweitzer employed her experience through monotype, a traditional printmaking method first noted in the 17^th century. The print contains an essence of painting, in which it pours rich tonalities of dream-like gestural techniques into a flock of birds. In an unsettling, eerie sky, a bird sweeps through the foreground of an industrial wasteland. By doing so, it reveals its witness to the capabilities of mankind. As the bird’s wings delicately whisk through the smog, it appears as if it is capable of swallowing him whole.

Marc Snyder. Dress Rehearsal.

            Marc Snyder chose to exhibit a more comical approach in Dress Rehearsal’s innovative adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Linocuts became a variant of woodcut in the 20^th century. In Snyder’s production, he transformed a two-dimensional linocut into a three-dimensional theatrical display of craftsmanship. The audience are given the opportunity to analyze his alienated miniature characters who stand before them, appropriated of typical Shakespearean attire, in the basis of their own world. On one hand stands the valiant Macbeth, a seemingly confident chihuahua, who bears his teeth as he eloquently grasps a cane. On the other hand, Lady Macbeth expressed as a distraught hen is only inches behind him.

            As anyone can see, printmaking’s development has been revised and edited over centuries of time. Monotype almost disappeared had it not been revived through Impressionists in the 19^th century, and linocuts were rejected for their simplicity by the art community of the early 20^th century. Printmaking may be subjective to criticism as an understated form of art, but its success is highlighted in its malleable possibilities of laborious, hand-made creativity. According to the statement of Brian Jones, Professor Emeritus of Indiana University Southeast and Juror of the exhibition, he was given “the opportunity to experience and acknowledge the wide range of approaches that make up the complex tapestry of contemporary printmaking, from the very traditional to the more experimental and innovative.”

            While each artist within the exhibition may execute similar techniques and personal touches, no print nor artist are alike. It is due to their freedom of experimentation they conceive identities that reveal demands of their processes. The technicality, improvisation, and artistic expression of the artist sustains the impressionable spirit of printmaking.

- Lori Wyne