Installation views of Little Monsters by Marvel Maring, includes mixed media collages and artist books, with colorful, obsessively filled, and inventive compositions.
Installation view of So That I Am Not Exactly Alone by Matthew Sontheimer, series of mixed media drawings paired with process studies contained in a sealed translucent envelope, and vintage postcard inspirations.
Installation views of Modular Landscapes: Printing Pivots, by Ian Huebert, woodblock installation of a vast panorama of irrigation patterns, and other prints.
New works
by Karen Kunc evoke the inexorable tension of our times and the realization of
irrevocable change. Created after the personal loss of the artist’s life
partner, these striking images of waiting and potential transition offer a
contemplative space. The pandemic years
coincide with this time of grieving, causing isolation, loss, universal sadness,
and greater possibility of change for all.
These works-in-progress are the artist’s response to this moment in time
and offer a visual metaphor of such transition and a memorial to our loved ones
passed.
Kunc’s
prints are created through the reduction woodcut process, from multiple blocks
that were each printed and carved, then printed and carved again in an
evolutionary process. Using selective
inking and transparent-to-opaque ink qualities there are unique aspects of
revealing and concealing, that mirrors the metaphoric meanings.
Also
showing will be new artist books, with etchings and eco-printing.
Constellation
Studios is a “laboratory” site for testing how these new printworks go
together, and how to live with art. Catching
sight, passing by, studying over time becomes an immersive awareness, and
allows for seeing and knowing what feels right.
Join in this experience – an explosion – of color, new forms, and
poignant timing.
Veda
M. Rives Aukerman & Meda R. Rives Smith, Normal, Illinois
Tom
Lang,
St. Louis, Missouri
Jill Powers, Boulder, Colorado
Constellation Studios
joins in the city-wide FiberFest featuring an exhibition
of unusual works made from various paper fibers: abaca (banana leaf), kozo bark
(related to the mulberry tree), and pigmented cotton. Artists invent new ways to form the fibers
from casting sheets for collage effects, to wet binding translucent layers, and
hand beating to expand the fiber for shaping.
Veda & Meda present Magnolia,
a BookEnviron installation, sparking an experiential journey to seek an
intangible connection to that which is beyond.
Tom’s works are never-before-shown handmade paper collages, for the “jamais vu”,
from French, meaning “never seen” phenomenon of experiencing a
situation that one recognizes, but that, nonetheless, seems very unfamiliar. Jill is exhibiting unique artists books with
pages of webbed kozo fiber, that carries the message of ecology and changes to
the environment.
Veda M. Rives Aukerman and Meda R. Rives Smith
are artists and identical twin sisters who pursue interests in printmaking,
handmade paper, artists’ books, and BookEnvirons; creating artworks both
independently and collaboratively. Veda is Interim Director of Normal
Editions Workshop (NEW) in the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State
University, Normal, Illinois. Meda has been a member of the art faculty
at Illinois State University and Heartland
Community College in Normal, Illinois; and at Eureka College in Eureka,
Illinois. Both artists have exhibited
widely throughout the U.S. and internationally.
Tom Lang is Professor in the Department of Art,
Design, and Art History at Webster University. He earned an M.A. in Aesthetics
and an MFA in printmaking from Ohio State University. He studied with S.W.Hayter
and Krishna Reddy at “Atelier 17” in Paris.
His interest in papermaking came from a workshop with Garner Tullis,
which lead to his own long-term study of the history and techniques of
hand-papermaking. His work has been
exhibited throughout the U.S. and in Europe.
Jill
Powers creates sculptural, and installation art with unusual natural materials.
Her primary art material is an inner bark, which she has developed as a
contemporary art medium. Jill teaches in the Visual Art Department at
Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. A graduate of Tyler School of
Art, Jill has shown her work internationally, and her work is in private,
corporate, and museum collections.
Installation views of Karen Kunc prints and Kenny Walton Glass, plus some unusual and beautiful studio items including leather bound books, small boxes, note cards, blank books and artist books. See the “salon style” installation of Karen’s demonstration prints from her years of teaching printmaking courses and workshops….fun and loose experiments in lithography, etching, screenprint, and woodcut.
Contact 403-438-0049 or karen@constellation-studios.net
for information on any item for pricing and availability, as things change quickly.
Taryn is a senior art student at University of Cincinnati, and had research funding for her residency in August. At Constellation Studios she created 8 etchings, made handmade paper for the title page, with a letterpress printed text, and put all together in a hand-bound book, all in 2 1/2 weeks of intense concentration. Great project! Here are a few highlights.
This beautiful and extensive show holds many works, and these images share some of the details, texts, and structural inventions of Bonnie’s prints, books and objects.
An exhibition on the life and works of veteran artist
and teacher Bonnie O’Connell, professor emeritus of University of Nebraska
Omaha School of the Arts will be presented at Constellation Studios, Lincoln,
Nebraska. Curated by Karen Kunc, the retrospective will take
viewers through her artistic journey spanning over forty years.
O’Connell produces work in the
media of book arts, letterpress and relief printmaking, collage and assemblage,
that address the material culture of prints and books, often deconstructing and
celebrating printed ephemera, the book as object, and the charged images of the
past and present.
She taught courses in book arts
(letterpress printing, typography, book design, bookbinding, and papermaking),
alternative media and color theory. She has directed and produced fine press
limited editions of contemporary poetry for Abattoir Editions, the literary
imprint of the Fine Arts Press at UNO. She also maintains The Penumbra Press,
her own private press established in Lisbon, Iowa, with a 40-year history in
literary fine printing.
O’Connell is a celebrated book artist, known for her teaching, wit, and vast knowledge of the fine press book field. Her mentors include: Walter Hamady who introduced her to letterpress through his Perishable Press Ltd. and his legendary teaching at the University of Wisconsin Madison; Kim Merker who founded the Windhover Press at the University of Iowa; and printer-publisher Harry Duncan of the Cummington Press and Abattoir Editions at UNO. She has collaborated with noted writers, poets and artists, including Poet Laureates Rita Dove and Ted Kooser, Norman Dubie, Tess Galleger, Lynn Emanuel, Brenda Hillman, and David St. John, Louise LaFond and Karen Kunc.
These invited artists are attracted to the woodcut process for the extensive carving effort and handwork that goes into the wood itself, that affects the quality of detail in their printed impressions. These artists share skills that are expressive or methodical, intimate, illusionary, layered, for the characteristic graphic impact that we love in the woodcut print.
Barbara Putnam carves shina wood, from drawings made onsite at dumps and recycling centers….mounds of metal, plastics, throw-aways including toysLiz Menard’s migration of printed monarchs across vignetts of distant landscapesMark Sisson’s magical portraits, with color woodcut layers, and the key layer from lithography for tone and detailsLarge prints by Alexa Goetzinger, with variations of inking enlivening the massive orchidKasey Ramirez creates wood-grain atmosphere around haunting ruins or constructionsLaura Smith plays with her carved blocks to create printed variations of iconic dress silhouettes
This annual workshop drew 12 artists from across the USA…coming from San Francisco, Virginia, New York, Illinois, Idaho, South Dakota, Massachusetts, and Nebraska. Intense work and comradarie of the group enabled sharing and a fun spirit, as we got to know each other across the ink and while carving blocks. Beautiful prints were accomplished by all, as we enjoyed the studio set up, and the nice spring atmosphere. Thanks all for a great workshop!
Artist Robyn Langley, from Boca Raton, Florida, was in residence in May – June, creating her etchings on copper and printing series of editions and unique impressions with collage and letterpress. Her images of high fashion dresses are disembodied and iconic, and play with the patterns and details that abstract the human form. In her collage prints she studies pattern and design, and relishes visual contrasts and cross-cultural references. Her soft-ground etchings captured layers of details from pressed feathers and leaves, printed with a letterpress printed poem. She is going on to graduate school in the fall…..good luck Robyn!
