May 25, 1978
Eight West Coast Printmakers, an exhibition of more than 80 graphics in lithography, etching and aquatint, silkscreen, woodcut, monotype, and Xerox will be held at The Brooklyn Museum, Eastern Parkway and Washington Avenue, from Saturday, May 27, through July 16. Selected by Gene Baro, Consultative Curator of Prints and Drawings, the works on view are by West Coast artists Carl T. Chew, Patricia Tobacco Forrester, Tom S. Fricano, Martin Levine, Gordon Mortensen, Kenjilo Nanao, Norie Sato, and James Torlakson. All of the artists were previously represented with a small selection of work in The Brooklyn Museum exhibition “30 Years of American Printmaking.” Graphics by Forrester, Mortensen, Levine and Sato are from the Museum collection. Admission to the Museum is free.
Using a standard color Xerox copier, Carl T. Chew (b. Urbana, Illinois, 1948) has produced for the exhibition subjective and playful montages unified through the Xerox process into casual and informal works of art. The black and white etchings of Patricia Tobacco Forrester (b. Northhampton, Mass., 1940) are nature studies, but “Forrester is no realist," Mr. Baro says. “She is not after the gross characteristics of her natural subjects, but searches the subtleties of form.” Tom S. Fricano (b. Chicago, Illinois, 1930), the inventor of “assemblegraph,” a process that permits simultaneous printing of many colors, here shows a group of abstract monotypes. “Whatever medium he elects,” Mr. Baro says, “the color experience will be dominant, the image a vehicle for the exploration of color.”
A lithograph and ten intaglios, two of them hand-colored, by Martin Levine (b. New York, N.Y., 1945) “deal mainly with the American landscape,” according to the artist, “and with how man has altered our environment, sometimes for the better, but in many cases, for the worse.” Like many of the artists on view, Gordon Mortensen (b. Amegard, North Dakota, 1938) prints his own work. The unusual technical proficiency involved in his color woodcuts of landscape is demonstrated in “Summer Pond,” which, as Mr. Baro points out, “is a reduction woodcut. . .printed. . .in 23 colors put down in 19 press runs.”
Lithographs with such titles as “Night Plant,” “Night Flower,” and “Silver Flower" by Kenjilo Nanao (b. Aomori, Japan, 1929) are, according to the artist, “objects suspended in utter stillness. I am, after all, interested in creating an illusion of timeless space around which the purity and sensuality of the object can be evoked.” Norie Sato (b. Sendai, Japan, 1949) works in combinations of all printmaking mediums. “Her imagery,” Mr. Baro says, “relates to video processes, which she sees as an extension of print. Her particular concerns are the constituents of edges and horizons: the visual no-man’s land where space meets space, object meets object, surface meets surface, or where elements meet in combination.”
The urban imagery of James Torlakson (b. San Francisco, California, 1951) is distinctly that of the West Coast. His method, Mr. Baro says, is “to work from color slides for his black and white etchings with aquatint....The resulting masses are often hypnotically, hauntingly real without being the literal record of the camera.”
On view simultaneously with Eight West Coast Printmakers, through July 16, is Graphicstudio U.S.F.: An Experiment in Art and Education, an exhibition of about 140 prints, drawings, portfolios, and multiples produced at the University of South Florida Graphicstudio through a unique collaboration of artists, administrators, teachers, students, publishers, and townspeople. Artists included are Richard Anuszkiewicz, Arakawa, Larry Bell, Harrison Covington, Jim Dine, Lee Friedlander, Charles Hinman, Jeffrey Kronsnoble, Nicholas Krushenick, Bryn Manley, Bruce Marsh, George Pappas, Philip Pearlstein, Mel Ramos, Frank Rampolla, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Edward Ruscha, Donald Saff, Richard Smith, and Adja Yunkers.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1978, 017-18. View Original
