ESCAPE FROM PRESSURE ISLAND!

I must write about the closing party for Print Austin, Escape from Pressure Island! This has become a yearly show that Ryan puts on exhibiting print works from students, faculty, and alumni of TAMUCC.  I must say that the show came out really well!

I do have to take a moment and thank Ryan for this one.  None of this would have been possible without him.  He spent all week framing and preparing works to be hung the day before the show.

Ryan and I went to hang the show on Friday. It was important to Ryan to make this show look professional and to be at a higher caliber.  I took the  hanging as a lesson in curation. Some difficult decisions (that I'm not going to mention) had to be made, and sometimes you have to do what is right even if it is not necessarily the nicest decision.  Either way our hard work paid off.

Off the Wall

During this past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the exhibition, Off the Wall: Contemporary Prints at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.  In correlation with PrintAustin, Southwestern works to bring forth a higher caliber of art works to the Austin area.  They are teaching their students the importance of working cross-mediums.

Off the Wall, presents artists with both national and international reputations that expand on the printed medium.  These artists are experimenting with the cross hairs of the 2D picture plane and the three-dimensional sculptural space.

I had first seen Nicole Pietrantoni's work during Print Houston a few years back, where I had seen the waterfall piece (that is also in this exhibition). I remember how beautiful and unique it was. I instantly remembered it when I saw it again.

Do you ever believe in destiny? Because I'm starting to think that maybe it was destiny for me to see her work again. Because Pietrantoni is probably becoming one of the most influential artists to me that I've discovered (or rediscovered) this year. Upon doing some more research on her I fell even more in love with her work. But also learned that both of us are wishing to explore the relationship between humans and nature. We both work upon interest in traditional landscape (in her case landscape photography), and the tensions between the beauty of the imagery of nature and threat of environmental change.

Sam Parker Salazar is an printmaker/paper sculptor out of Illinois (but received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin when I was there). What starts as a simple monotype became artworks that transform the spaces that they are in.  Through her colorful, hand-cut paper shapes and lines, the space is transformed by the light and shadows casted by the forms. 

Parker Salazar hopes to break the typical uses of printmaking by creating installations that are unique of itself and for the space.  She is concerned with creating movement throughout the space as if it were a gestural drawing.

Stacey Elko (who I had the pleasure of meeting and is quite a character) explorers what she calls "internal states of transformation" through her metaphorically charged Fish Bomb Boats.  These structures that hang like airships from the ceiling are very much inspired by Elko being in Morocco during her time with the Peace Corp.  Elko explained that she first created these airships for another show concerned with mobility and transportation; where she wished to create something out of the ordinary.  Thus came the creation of these airboats.  She envisioned a world drowned due to global warming and that the remnants of humanity had to live in these airboats in order to survive.  With small wooden dowels and reeds used in paper making the boats were constructed.  She then embellished them with tiny woodcuts and henna paintings, all of which were inspired by her time with the women of Morocco. 

Sang-Mi Yoo is a classically trained Korean-American artist whom constructs large hanging images of row houses and flora to explore the relationship between her experiences of living in Korea and in the United States (most recently in Lubbock, Texas).  Yoo calls to question of how domestic experiences affect perceptions of Korean and American identities.  Yoo explained the importance of being able to branch away from the work that an artist typically does.  As a classically trained lithographer, Yoo says she feels that she does tire of working on the stone, and when she creates her large paper installations it acts as a breath of fresh air.  That even when she returns to drawing and lithography after working on these large projects, it brings excitement and new light to working on those works.

Print Expo 2018

This week was the last weekend of Print Austin.  Every year it finishes up with a print exposition.  Since the first time I attend Print Austin in 2014, I have never had the opportunity to attend the Print Expo until this year.  While I have attended other open artist table sessions at conferences in the past, this one had a different sort of air to it.

While some artists use this as an opportunity to hopefully sell work, that is not really what this event is for.  Its more of an opportunity to talk to other print makers or to socialize with friends from other cities. There is a very relaxed sort of air to everything. What I am happy with is that the event coordinators and other artists are very good about publicizing the  event.  It brings a group of people in that may not have necessarily seen this sort of work before. 

Amy Stevens: Confections

One thing I can say for sure is do not walk into Amy Steven's exhibition, Confections, while hungry. 

Okay, all joking aside, I wasn't really sure how I felt about this work when I first saw the exhibition card. I was automatically enticed by the bright colors and the flowers, because well I like these things; but I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at. And then I realized it was cake.  Which leads me to my next thought, that it was a really gaudy, obsessive, flowery cake. But I still wasn't quite sure what to think of it.

Working the late night building hours, I get to hang out in the building by myself quite a bit.  One thing that I like to do is I go into the gallery and admire the art by myself. I prefer to do this over the open gallery hours. I can look at the art and take as much time as I like without distraction. I did exactly this with Confections.  Looking around at the photographs it was obvious to me that this was poking fun at the idea of female perfection. There was a sense of humor and even obsessiveness.  It is a feminist view of how society values the near impossible perfection of craft and home making from woman.

During Steven's talk she discussed exactly what I was thinking. What started as her making and photographing 30 cakes for her birthday became a study of femininity and the idea of feminine perfection. With her failure of making the perfect birthday cakes, she decided to have fun with this project. It became about the humor, grossness, and imperfection. It is interesting on how she works with personal themes, but the work doesn't necessarily become personal.

One thing I appreciated about the talk is how Stevens not only focus on the progression of her art making but also discusses her influences, her environment, and explaining the goings on in her life.  I feel that this is important to explain, especially when holding a discussion such as this in an academic setting. She said herself that we "cannot live in a bubble!" I feel that sometimes artists, students especially, don't look too much outside of their own environment. It is important to research other art makers, because their could be others thinking just like you are.

PRINTAUSTIN: SOLAR // MISREMEMBRANCE

So a little bit about PrintAustin from the people at PrintAustin (because they are way better at words than I am):

PrintAustin's mission to the Austin art community and galleries is to share our enthusiasm for printmaking by helping galleries curate, exhibit, and promote works on paper and to engage a wider audience through in-house artist talks, signings, panels, printmaking demonstrations, and print-focused art happenings. PrintAustin

And this is exactly what PrintAustin does.  It started a few years ago as a small group of galleries and print shops in Austin hosting different exhibitions, demonstrations, and a juried show. Now the event has now grown to an international juried exhibition, multiple galleries showing arts on paper, demonstrations, panels, and artist-talks, all promoting prints.  I feel that the month long event has grown for the good. Not only has brought in a larger audience for print related arts but it also makes it easier for emerging and all ready established print-based artists to show, share information, and generally come together.

My print, Solis, was also chosen for all the promotional work for the show!

Which made me pretty excited when my piece was chosen to be apart of a group exhibition at the Art.Science.Gallery. 

So a little bit about the Art.Science.Gallery: its a space that shows artwork steeped in and reflective of scientific ideas. They strive to show work that integrate scientific knowledge discovery through artistic processes.

The premise for SOLAR was prints that were either about, made by or for the sun. Which immediately made me think about my print, Solis.

Solis comes from an ongoing body of work, The New Frontier, that I started in 2015. I'm inspired by the scientific endeavors to fully comprehend the different planets, stars, moons, and other entities in our universe. Solis (in reference to the sun), is part of this body of work, that is my interpretation of a full reconnaissance of our solar system (I'm still on Jupiter's moons, there is 69 of them). Current space missions such as New Horizons, Mars Curiosity, and Juno bring forth a plethora of imagery and information from space.  Some of these missions' concerns are the surface properties and atmospheres of the outer reaches of space. Solis speaks on the intensity, radiation, and brightness of the sun's photosphere and while the science behind the new discoveries may not be apparent in my work there is an integration of landscape, cartography, and the impression of looking through a micro or telescope in the prints.

But that is enough about me.....

The other great opening of the weekend was TAMUCC own Silas Braux's solo exhibition, Misremembrance at Slugfest Printmaking Workshop and Gallery. Slugfest holds a place dear to my heart (mostly because I printed there for close to four years). While you may go there for the awesome art or the cooperative workshop, you stay for the company, crazy bathroom, cats, and wine. 

Silas was chosen by Tom Druecker and Margaret Simpson of Slugfest from the Full Court Press Juried Exhibition last fall.  His work comes from his observations of the relationship between natural and built environments.  It is a stunning show of 2D and 3D works, and Silas' hard work has paid off!

All in all it was a great art filled weekend! I'll be back in Austin for ESCAPE FOR PRESSURE ISLAND on February 10th! All the work featured are from artists from the printmaking department at TAMUCC.