Two artists from Tokyo Japan have been in residence here during November. Kazuko Araki and Kaoru Morita are sharing a great experience for concentration on their printmaking and enjoying cultural exchange. This is their first visit to the USA, and they are seeing Nebraska go through all the drama of fall to winter changes, while enjoying the open prairie landscape, football crowds, and studio activities of exhibitions and workshops. We are enjoying our language efforts and translations about life and printmaking! Special thanks to the Center for the Science of Human Endeavor in Tokyo for continuing to facilitating this exchange opportunity for Japanese artists!
Kaoru is working in Mokuhanga (Japanese watercolor woodblock) with soft colors printed by hand, one each day for a color record of atmosphere and influences. She specializes in shallow carving into the woodblock, so that beautiful nuances of tone are printed. Her drawing is here of a still life from some of the handblown glass pieces of Kenny Walton, and her woodblock print from this image is just getting underway.
Kazuko has created two editions of collagraph prints, from multiple cardboard plates, that have textures and drypoint scratches that hold the ink, printed in registration for a constructivist landscape for mountain goats. She is inventive with her platemaking and the beautiful printed layers. These two artist friends have studied printmaking together at the Musashino Art School in Tokyo.
Q: What is the opposite of a book club on steroids?
A: Reading Willa Cather’s novel ‘My Ántonia’ at the slow pace of six pages per day.
What is the Slow Read?
The Slow Read is a public literary / art project conceived of and produced by Portland-based artist Barbara Tetenbaum. “After taking a workshop on video mapping, I had this vision of projecting the pages of a novel onto the wall of a building, so people would read together in public. The project has now grow to nearly a dozen public sites and can be accessed by anyone on their personal computers. This means that everyone in America and beyond can essentially read as a community,” says Tetenbaum. “This year is the centenary of a book I’ve been working with for some time, ‘My Ántonia’ by Willa Cather. It made perfect sense to use this particular novel for the Slow Read and a chance to find a deeper connection to her words and the issues Cather was illuminating which are still relevant today. Some readers will stumble upon this novel for the first time, others will be rereading it again, discovering something new in her story. I want to offer a piece of culture in the form of shared daily ritual, to be experienced slowly over time, providing a counterweight to the spectacle-based world we live in.”
During this centenary year of My Ántonia’s publication, readers around the country and the globe can follow along on their cell phones, laptops — or at a public site location – and read closer and deeper than before. From May 30 through August 11th, images of the first edition page spreads will be looped on a dedicated website (www.slowread.org) and offer the first-time reader, or long-time fan, this unusual, slow unfolding of the novel.
Why?
“Cather shows us what it was like to live on the 1890’s Nebraska prairie, a life that was tough and beautiful at the same time.” says Tetenbaum, “Cather herself grew up in Red Cloud around immigrants from Central Europe and Russia. ‘My Ántonia’ reads as a chronicle to their humanity and struggles during the formative years of the American Plains. The immigrant experience is particularly relevant in our current political climate, and perhaps there is a way to find a meaningful dialog through Cather’s story.”
Where?
Public venues such as libraries and museums are hosting the Slow Read, usually through a publicly-accessible video monitor. {At Constellation Studios, 2055 ‘O’ Street, the monitor faces the street and is best viewed in the evening, and runs 24 hours with new page selection added each morning} Individuals who don’t have access to these sites can read along on their own internet-connected devices by going to www.slowread.org and clicking the “Today’s Reading” button.
Barb Tetenbaum will be taking the project on the road in early June to show at outdoor sites. Go to the website blog to find the next screening: https://theslowread.squarespace.com/news/
When?
The broadcast begins on May 30th and ends on August 11, 2018. If you miss a day, the website has an archive of previously shown pages.
The Slow Read website links to activities, discussions, exhibitions and lectures organized by Cather institutions and scholars. It also contains a visual concordance of images from eight years of personal artist projects connected to this novel. Explore the website for all this.
Where can I find the public Slow Read venues?
Currently, these sites are hosting the Slow Read:
Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud, NE willacather.org
Love Library at Univ. of NE-Lincoln https://libraries.unl.edu
Oregon College of Art and Craft, Portland, OR ocac.edu
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR pica.org
Pacific Northwest College of Art Library, Portland, OR pnca.edu
Working Library, Portland, OR c3initiative.org/working-library.htm
Union College in Lincoln, NE
Check www.slowread.org/abouttheproject to explore additional locations as they are added and to track The Slow Read mobile pop-up on the road.
About the artist/director of The Slow Read:
Barbara Tetenbaum is a visual artist interested in the act of reading. She uses the mediums of books, prints, installation, and animation to explore this subject matter. She founded her artist book imprint, Triangular Press, in 1979. Barb is the recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships, career and project awards from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation and the Regional Arts and Culture Council. She is currently Professor and Head of the Book + Print at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. She holds a B.S. (Fine Art) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Constellation Studios presents Our Skyline, a creative project and exhibition, of hand carved linoleum block prints by over 28 community artists and 20 UNL students. The prints were created in respond to the historic linoleum block print by noted Nebraska art teacher Gladys Lux created in the 1930’s of the Lincoln skyline with the state capitol building under construction. This print is featured in the exhibition on loan from the Lux family. This creative project is an Official Event of the Nebraska Sesquicentennial, and celebrates 150 years of statehood.
Our Skyline participants were inspired with a myriad of art and design approaches: views of our state capitol, downtown, distant viewpoints of Lincoln, urban construction, iconic Nebraska landmarks, rural settings and structures, our open skies, nature silhouettes of trees, grasses, the prairie, and conceptual ideas. Participants took part in two printing sessions to carve and print with assistants to run blocks and paper through the presses during the sessions. For many this was their first time creating a print, with “printing magic” transforming their mark-making into a striking graphic statement.
48 Artists:
Nora Abdel Monem, Christie Asuoha, Joel Anderson, Anissa Bensen, Abby Birkel, Jeri Brainard , Kristin Brooks, Anne Burton, Keith Buswell, Austin Carstens, Dana Clements , Haley Collins, Sally Cox, Erin Cross, Samantha Evans, Lynette Fast, David Fowler, Amy Groff, Abigail Groth, Justin Groth, Amanda Guenther, Mary Guenther, Emily Heater, Madeline Hinrichs, Michele Hrbek, Kristina Insingo, Brynna James, Carolyn Johnson, Megan Kemptar, Hannah Klemme, Karen Kunc, Rise Lange, Yoojeong Lee, Mariah Livingston, Lisa Mills, Brookely Nitsch, Gail Ogden, Lindsey Pinkerton, Diane Reece, Emily Reiman, Jessica Reiter, Jackie Rogers, Rachel Saniuk, Yria Santos-Torres, Kate Speicher, Kristin Vorderstrasse, Emma Ward Jamaica Wilson
Discover the world of the print with woodcuts, linoleum prints, etchings, intaglios, mezzotints, lithographs, screen prints, digital prints, monoprints, letterpress.
For collecting & gifting. Featuring local print artists and students!
Artists:
Anissa Bensen , Anne Burton, Keith Buswell, Hannah Demma, Amanda Durig, Madelyne Hansen, Kat Hedges, Brynna James, Karen Kunc, Erika Larson, Yoojeong Lee, Hannah Maakestad, Emily Mazur-Mickells, Pecos Pryor, Nicholas Sheldon, Danley Walkington, Stephanie Wright
Great engagement with visiting artist Sukha Worob in September and the resulting exhibition and stamping activity. Here are some action photos of the collaborative stamping project and his installation of prints. Thanks for the DIY knowledge and collaborative spirit!
Migrations is a huge gallery installation printed by handcast rubber stamps and ink of iconic images created by UNL students, inspired by Visiting Artist Suhka Worob. The possibility to carve and cast one’s own rubber stamps enables unique icons for repeat printing and layers to accumulate and evolve. The students did the stamping and printing on the large gallery wall, creating patterning and concepts of mass migrations – of birds, insects, herds, people, and the conveyances that transport the many individuals that make up the whole.
Worob will present his own print works on paper in a concurrent exhibition. He has developed this innovative casting process and DIY attitude to create with stamping and rollers for large scale printing impact of a myriad of symbols and signs.
Artist Statement: “My work is created using hand-cast rubber rollers covered in raised dots. The rollers are inked up using cyan, yellow, magenta and black. The dots and colors reference the building blocks of printed ephemera. During printing, patterns and images begin to emerge out of the random color relationships and dot placements. The resulting color relationships and images ask the viewer and participating creator to examine their interest in seeking deeper meaning and context for what is, at its core, just random chance.”
Marnix & Veronique came from Ghent, Belgium for a two week residency at Constellation Studios. Marnix developed his copperplate etchings with non-toxic BIG ground and acrylic aquatint for a new print series that suggests science-like instructions and images. While Veronique developed her own cut paper image sources from design magazines to create meticulous and humorous collages. They enjoyed summertime and fireworks in Lincoln, and their time for a creative retreat. So great to have you here and look for your return soon so we can continue our conversations!
Sarah Turner, an artist from Detroit, was in residence at Constellation Studios for two weeks in April. She worked on a series of prints made from inked objects and found materials, transferring detailed impressions, that literally spoke about form and function, of everyday detritus, and elegant simplicity. She delighted in her discoveries from the hardware and thrift stores, and how to find the right pressure to capture the hidden textures.
A virtual walk through of the gallery! Metropolis includes 303 international artists and originated in Europe and was assembled in Venice Italy in 2014. Invisible Citieswill be bound in 2016, and all the 228 folio pages are shown on the walls. This new accordion folded book has contributions from across the USA, and from Chile, Italy, Poland, France, Argentina, Egypt, Canada, Switzerland, Japan, India, Finland, New Zealand, Columbia, Guatemala. The artists book are made in response to the evocative theme of Invisible Cities and join to enrich the installation.
Thanks to Madison for painting a great mural this summer! This mysterious narrative intrigues us with a fantasy world of larger -than-life figures that seem to stand in the garden plantings. Madison has a distinctive style and dedication to the her visual story-telling. You can join this ongoing story with a great photo op in front of this mural!
Metropolis is a handmade book venture in a spectrum of printmaking processes by artists from around the world, including two from Constellation Studios. The theme speaks to the broad contemporary urban experience and extends to the idea of the network of communication possible today.
The idea for this collaboration came from Berlin-based artist Andreas Kramer who prints at Centro Internazionale della Grafica (CIG) in Venice where Metropolis was realized under the guidance of master bookmaking Silvano Gosparini and where the Renaissance legacy of traditional Venetian book publishing continues.
Among the 303 interpretations of this theme, the reader is destined to discover reflections of one’s own meandering thoughts about ‘metropolis’. The leporello (accordion) construction enhances this stream-of-consciousness effect as it stretches fully to 215 feet. Ideas circling forwards and backwards through compositional and iconic connections and diversions make an impression underlined by the haptic qualities of the media where ink makes sculptural lines on paper.
What lingers is a metropolis of the mind, a crazy-creative vitality mirroring the variability and vicissitudes of existence, and inspiring a continuing interaction, and a visually challenging mix.
Participants come from: Australia, Japan, Brazil, USA, Italy, Germany, Russia, Poland, Hungary, UK, France, Spain, Tunisia, Canada. The edition of three has been circulating on exhibition in Italy, Germany, USA and most recently in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and at the Katzen Rotunda Gallery, American University, Washington, DC. This is the premier exhibition in the mid-west.
CONCURRENT is Invisible Cities, an exhibit of artists’ books and folios destined to become a collaborative leporello book that present new interpretations of urbanity. The theme is inspired by the imaginative novel Le citta invisibili by Italian writer Italo Calvino, published in Italy in 1972 in which Marco Polo reports to Emperor Kublia Khan on fantastical, dream-like cities all named after women that he purportedly visited. This book is organized in a mathematical structure. After each eleven descriptions, the two men discuss ideas that evolve from the tales, reflecting on human nature and linguistics.
It remains to be seen what ideas, images and symbology the 150+ US national and international artists will contribute expressing the evolving new experience of real, ideal and virtual contemporaneous and futuristic city life.
On February 27th, Constellation Studios teams up with writers Katie Schmid Henson and Katie Pryor to host an evening of poetry and visual art. Doors open at 6:00pm, reading begins at 7:00pm, and an art raffle featuring donated work from local and UNL graduate artists will take place at 8:00pm. All proceeds will benefit The Family Literacy Program, supported by the Foundation for Lincoln Public Schools. Karen will also have the letterpress rolling out a few poems from the evening for guests to take home. Featured readers include Belinda Acosta, Katie Pryor, and Kim Tedrow. The event is free to the public and we’d love to see you there! For more information please visit the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/878870602226630/
