Of all the fine arts, printmaking may be the sleeper. When was the last time you heard of a blockbuster show of, say, etchings? Even a dedicated museumgoer could be forgiven for not having seen many besides a few Rembrandt landscapes and Goya’s “Disasters of War.”
“Printmaking can be pretty mysterious in that most people don’t quite understand what they're looking at,” says third-year M.F.A. printmaker Jenn Johnson. “Prints just aren’t accessible and immediate like painting and sculpture, which people are more familiar with.”
That premise prompted the show Johnson and two colleagues have mounted at the new University Collections at McCalla space (525 N. Indiana Avenue). Curated by Johnson and second-year printmaking M.F.A. students Alyssa Davis and Nichole Wolz, “IU Printmaking: 60 Years of Innovation and Art” showcases the history of printmaking at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. Which is much more than just etchings.
“Some of these processes go back centuries and have largely been left unchanged since they were established – or have been nuanced and individualized," Johnson says. “What we’re hoping to do with the show is to give people tools to access what they’re looking at in print shows and archives, so they have a way to connect with imagery that artists spent a long time and a lot of labor and knowledge to be able to create.”
Opening Friday, September 30, the exhibition is drawn from an archive as undersung as the medium itself. Starting in 1963, faculty members Marvin Lowe and Rudy Pozzatti began gathering prints from graduating M.F.A. students. When she arrived in 1976, Associate Professor (now Emerita) Wendy Calman took on the task of maintaining, protecting, and cataloguing the collection, to which each graduating printmaking M.F.A. has donated since 1963. (The archive also includes a handful of student prints Pozzatti saved from 1957- 62.)
Although Pozzatti and Lowe had started the collection, "Rudy always explained to me that ... Wendy spearheaded its organization into a 'real' archive during her tenure," explains Professor Tracy Templeton, printmaking area head. "I think he was very grateful for the care of it." Housed in a room adjacent to the school’s printmaking studios, the archive serves as a significant teaching resource, unrivaled at other printmaking programs -- or in the school’s other areas, for that matter. The archive’s reputation precedes it in printmaking circles, according to the curators, for whom it served as a draw when choosing a graduate program.
Michelle Rozic, "Photokinesis," 2007, Color Mezzotint, Digital Print
One foot in the past, one in the present
There’s at least one piece from every decade in the exhibition, which comprises etching and other intaglio techniques, lithography, screen printing, woodblock printing, ink jet printing from digital photographic files, cut paper, and ephemeral, interactive media, such as jigsaw puzzles and works on newsprint. Not to mention numerous works that integrate techniques.
“Printmakers often have one foot in the past and one foot in the present while they’re figuring out how to make this process their own,” says Johnson. Michelle Rozic’s “Photokinesis” (2007) illustrates that duality: the 2007 piece combines digital printing with the historical process of color mezzotint for an effect that is both seamless and timeless.
Flora and fauna
The floral imagery of Rozic’s piece finds its faunal counterpart in another print on view – Jane Abrams’ “The Zoo” (1971), a grid of sixteen cells occupied by furry, mammalian body parts.The print combines the historic technique of engraving – perhaps best known as the means for reproducing and disseminating paintings before photography – with a medium much more at home in 1971 – screen printing. The extent to which the pure abstraction of the screen-printedgrid contrasts with the organic, tactile quality of the engraved cellsprovides an eloquent formal statement on the confinement of the traditional zoo.
Jane Abrams, "The Zoo," 1971, Engraving, Screenprint
Hard stone, delicate imagery
A lithograph from 1983 explores marine life. Pam Sutton’s “Shell Universe” juxtaposes the diaphanous, bioluminescent world of the ocean’s depths with sandy terra firma. It is hard to conceive of a medium better suited to the delicate, ethereal subject than lithography, which involves drawing on specially reactive limestone, from which a print is pulled. The fine grain of the limestoneis visible in the print’s ground, enhancing the work’sdreamy atmosphere.
Like the sea itself, the print creates seemingly limitless space for contemplation. But the printmakers are eager to bring the conversation back to the nuts and bolts of technique. Their descriptions include terms like “spit-biting,” “brayer,” “grease-attractive,” and “gum arabic.” They just can’t help it.
Pam Sutton, "Shell Universe," 1983, Lithography
Every printmaker, an advocate
“Teaching people about printmaking is a priority for every printmaker because it’s a bit nebulous and unfamiliar,” says Johnson. “Every printmaker has to be an advocate for their process and their field.” The curators’ educational zeal is evident in the wall labels explaining processes. The labels include a QR code linking to demonstration videos, which are also offered in McCalla’s screening room across the hall.
Printmaking is an admittedly technique-heavy field. But instead of serving as a barrier, the curators point out, the technicality inherent in the field attracts artists from other mediums.
"Right now we have grad students from the fibers area, from photography, ceramics, sculpture, and metals doing studies in printmaking,” says Johnson. “It’s kind of like a centrifuge where people come together. They see something in the process that intrigues them, and then they can take that back into their own practice. Printmaking can be as restrictive as you want or need it to be, or also as malleable and expansive.”
“Printmaking is experimental,” Davis elaborates; “it’s not just one thing. Printmaking’s kind of everything; it’s everywhere.”
