From Block to Book: Color Woodcut Printmaking for an Artist Book, with Karen Kunc

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This intensive, exciting hands-on workshop goes from printing color reduction woodcut images that become the pages of a hand bound accordion book.  This approach is inventive, with contemporary, creative methods, that can be spontaneous, simple and direct.   This expressive medium will be introduced and explored through demonstrations and discussions of cutting techniques, oil-base inks and water-base inks, modifiers, and printing by hand as well as using the press.   The goal is for each participant to create an artist book that generates a multilevel sensory experience.  Concepts for invention and good fun will be directed in a collaborative atmosphere.

Pressure Printing with Stencils on the Letterpress

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October 8, Saturday, 10 – noon

$30

 

Join in the renaissance of letterpress today, using the Constellation Studios vintage presses for quality and hands-on directness.  We will play with pressure printing, a unique printed “capture” of textures and patterns from stencils.

Surface Impressions installation views

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Here are views of the installation at Constellation Studios of

Surface Impressions: International Juried Print Exhibition

June 3 – August 26, 2022

The LUX Center for the Arts and Constellation Studios will present ‘Surface Impressions,’ an ambitious exhibition focusing on hand-produced relief prints from woodblock, linoleum cut, wood engraving, and mixed media relief prints. This showcase will bring fine art prints to the fore, enabling Lincoln, the LUX Center for the Arts, and Constellation Studios to join in a world-wide conversation about creative innovations in prints. Surface Impressions intends to connect artists and audiences to the 21st century language of relief printmaking as a viable artistic engagement for today.

Seventy-four prints have been selected by Juror Sean Starwars. Fifty prints will be on display at the LUX Center for the Arts, and 24 will be on display at Constellation Studios. This biennial of relief prints here in the center of America will showcase artists from around the country and abroad, all selected from an open call for entries. The works on exhibition focus on the role of the relief print as a means of cultural critique and exploration of this ancient but newly invigorated discipline as practiced and defined by today’s artists.

 

L to R:  Carol Acquilano; Jim Monson; Aric Russom; Tom Virgin; Rich Fowler; Susan Marie Brundage; Nina Jordan; Cynthia Back.

L to R: Alexandria Motiu; Art Brown;  Art Hazelwood; James Ehlers.

L to R:  Nina Jordan;  Brian Kreydatus;  Marga Galins; Wesley Kramer; Alexandria Motiu ; Art Brown.

L to R:  Claire Bowman; Ximena Medina Sancho; Endi Poskovic; Kristin Boyer

First Prize:  Endi Poskovic

Third Prize: Aric Russom

 

Visit this website for the other prize winners, and details of each artist and their works:

https://www.luxcenter.org/exhibitions/surface-impressions-2022

 

 

 

Look Closely: Small Portfolios by Rebecca Gilbert, Matthew Wittmer, Sue Coe + others

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First Friday Reception May 6, 6:00 – 8:00pm

Small Portfolios from the Constellation Studios Collection

by  Rebecca Gilbert, Matthew Wittmer, Sue Coe

+ other small selections.

May 6 – 28, 2022

 

A special opportunity to view a cohesive series of prints by several artists that each offer visual delights and details.  Prints in this presentation format can play with variations on a theme and echo notes that are intended for visual readings.   We are fascinated by the attention, skill, and stream-of-story within these series.

Rebecca Gilbert is making an extensive project on the Dance of Death, updated for our times, yet referential to the Medieval allegory.  Her project in its entirety will consist of a total of 82 prints, all unbound, to be housed in a clamshell box.   41 are Holbein images that she is faithfully creating as wood engravings and printing along with movable type, and 41 are from her own drawings also interpreted as wood engravings. She has been working diligently on the project for about two years and is just a 1/3 of the way through.   She estimates it could be four more years before it’s finished.  A selection is presented here.

Rebecca Gilbert is a Philadelphia-based artist. She earned an MFA in Printmaking + Book Arts from The University of the Arts and a BFA from Marshall University. She was awarded an Independence Foundation Art Fellowship and a Winterthur Maker/Creator Research Fellowship; an Artist Residency at Sparkbox Studio, Ontario; a Surdna Foundation Enrichment Grant to support her exploration of wood engraving at the Augusta Heritage Center.  Gilbert serves on the board of The Wood Engravers’ Network; and teaches at The University of the Arts and the Maryland Institute College of Art.  https://rebeccaprint.com/

Matthew Wittmer created the Run series as a UNL MFA candidate (97-00).  These intaglio prints convey extensive and obscure references to film scenes of……you know……running.   Beautifully drawn with chiaroscuro effects and a sense of a motion capture, our filmic knowledge is tested.

Matthew has been a creative artist and documentarian of sorts since grade school. His work has been published by Roman & Littlefield, University of California Press, and Independent School Magazine. He was raised in southern Missouri and now lives in southern California.  He is currently the librarian for middle and high school students in Sherman Oaks, where he can cultivate a crossroads between outreach and learning. He documents the April 19th Survivors’ Memorial service in Waco, Texas annually.  He has demonstrated wire walking and rigging equipment with Philippe Petit for The Walk, a film on the WTC crossing.  http://www.stormbound.org/

Sue Coe’s small collection is The Tail that Wagged the Dog, a series of etching, aquatint, and linoleum prints from 1990.  Coe is a passionate artist and illustrator who uses her visual voice to speak for animal rights and our relationship with them, as well as social justice issues, all with dark humor, pathos, and graphic intensity.

Sue Coe is considered one of the foremost political artists working today. Born in England, she currently lives in Upstate New York.  Coe is best known for her paintings and drawings of animals in slaughterhouses and factory farms. She posts a print each day that follows the latest news stories.  https://www.graphicwitness.org/coe/enter.htm

A selection of other interesting small works by various artists will be included TBD.

 

Look Closely: Small Portfolios by Rebecca Gilbert, Matthew Wittmer, Sue Coe

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Small Portfolios from the Constellation Studios Collection

by  Rebecca Gilbert, Matthew Wittmer, Sue Coe

+ other small selections.

May 6 – 28, 2022

First Friday Reception May 6, 6:00 – 8:00pm

A special opportunity to view a cohesive series of prints by several artists that each offer visual delights and details.  Prints in this presentation format can play with variations on a theme and echo notes that are intended for visual readings.   We are fascinated by the attention, skill, and stream-of-story within these series.

Rebecca Gilbert is making an extensive project on the Dance of Death, updated for our times, yet referential to the Medieval allegory.  Her project in its entirety will consist of a total of 82 prints, all unbound, to be housed in a clamshell box.   41 are Holbein images that she is faithfully creating as wood engravings and printing along with movable type, and 41 are from her own drawings also interpreted as wood engravings. She has been working diligently on the project for about two years and is just a 1/3 of the way through.   She estimates it could be four more years before it’s finished.  A selection is presented here.

Rebecca Gilbert is a Philadelphia-based artist. She earned an MFA in Printmaking + Book Arts from The University of the Arts and a BFA from Marshall University. She was awarded an Independence Foundation Art Fellowship and a Winterthur Maker/Creator Research Fellowship; an Artist Residency at Sparkbox Studio, Ontario; a Surdna Foundation Enrichment Grant to support her exploration of wood engraving at the Augusta Heritage Center.  Gilbert serves on the board of The Wood Engravers’ Network; and teaches at The University of the Arts and the Maryland Institute College of Art.  https://rebeccaprint.com/

Matthew Wittmer created the Run series as a UNL MFA candidate (97-00).  These intaglio prints convey extensive and obscure references to film scenes of……you know……running.   Beautifully drawn with chiaroscuro effects and a sense of a motion capture, our filmic knowledge is tested.

Matthew has been a creative artist and documentarian of sorts since grade school. His work has been published by Roman & Littlefield, University of California Press, and Independent School Magazine. He was raised in southern Missouri and now lives in southern California.  He is currently the librarian for middle and high school students in Sherman Oaks, where he can cultivate a crossroads between outreach and learning. He documents the April 19th Survivors’ Memorial service in Waco, Texas annually.  He has demonstrated wire walking and rigging equipment with Philippe Petit for The Walk, a film on the WTC crossing.  http://www.stormbound.org/

Sue Coe’s small collection is The Tail that Wagged the Dog, a series of etching, aquatint, and linoleum prints from 1990.  Coe is a passionate artist and illustrator who uses her visual voice to speak for animal rights and our relationship with them, as well as social justice issues, all with dark humor, pathos, and graphic intensity.

Sue Coe is considered one of the foremost political artists working today. Born in England, she currently lives in Upstate New York.  Coe is best known for her paintings and drawings of animals in slaughterhouses and factory farms. She posts a print each day that follows the latest news stories.  https://www.graphicwitness.org/coe/enter.htm

A selection of other interesting small works by various artists will be included TBD.

 

Constellation Collaboration with UNL Students: Monoprint & Collage Printstallation

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April 1 – April 26, 2022

April 1 First Friday Reception 6:00 – 8:00

This exhibition presents the workshop investigations of invited UNL art students to engage with monoprinting and “gum transfer” techniques for a three-day intensive experience to create a variety of images and materials for a collaborative installation project for the gallery walls. The students include Joselyn Andreason, Kassidy Linaberry, Mya Levitch, Reid Martin, Katherine Morrow, Javier Rivera.  They will respond to new ways of working and the collaboration challenge to push and explore new directions.   This process offers unknowns yet feedback, decision-making and problem solving….asking constantly “what about this!” Organized and coordinated by UNL UCARE and Constellation Studios student intern Joselyn Andreason this outreach project intends to step off the edge of traditional presentations to take us into a new vision of “what could be” using print-based media as a vehicle for installation work.

Read about this trend in contemporary prints:

“Ink/The Lexicon of Tomorrow:  Print-Based Installation” by Sarah Kirk Hanley

https://magazine.art21.org/2011/04/08/ink-the-lexicon-of-tomorrow-print-based-installation/#.YiqoV8ZMEWp

Release/Reveal: Karen Kunc Works in Process

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October 1 – November 30, 2021

First Friday Reception October 1, 6-8pm

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.

Visiting at other times by appointment.

Please contact 402-438-0049   karen@constellation-studios.net

 

Manifest: Stephanie Wright

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Guest Artist-in-Residence and exhibition

August 6 – September 25, 2021

Opening reception First Friday August 8, 6-8pm

Also First Friday September 3

Constellation Studios is pleased to host Stephanie Wright, as a Guest Artist-in-Residence, a new program to foster local artists for special projects.  Her current body of work focusing on large scale drypoint prints on paper, will open on August 6 for First Friday, expand with new work throughout her residency and end September 25th with the installation and imagery transformed. Stephanie’s prints use animal imagery to activate a narrative of interrelationships and emotions of love, nurturing, rage, jealousy, social anxiety, fear and contemplation.

Stephanie has an uncanny drawing ability to capture such instinctual moods, through a turn of the head, glance of an eye, a furrow or eyelid lift, that wordlessly conveys such a range of emotions.   She builds tensions through groupings, using space and placement to create isolation or movement.   She scratches on plastic sheets with an etching needle  to make a roughly textured image, which catches the printer’s ink when the plate surface is wiped.   The plastic plate is run through the etching press with damped paper to impress the inky image into paper.   In this way she can work directly and on a large scale, creating the enormity of an emotional body manifesting in flesh, hair, fur and faces, twisted in response to its own sentience.

Stephanie Wright earned her MFA at the University of Nebraska with a focus in Printmaking in the spring of 2017. She grew up in Louisiana and earned her BFA at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2014. She is an instructor and gallery manager at Live Yes Studios, Lincoln.

 

Color Woodcut Printmaking Workshop

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With Karen Kunc

June 7 – 11.

workshop full.

 

Watch for the action and printing magic during this intense and creative experience.   Will be posting on Facebook, Instagram, and in upcoming Constellation Studios newsletters.

 

Kitchen Story: Narrative Etchings of Isaiah Jones

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Kitchen Story: Narrative Etchings of Isaiah Jones

June 4 – July 16, 2021

First Friday Reception, June 4, 6-8pm

Constellation Studios presents the new prints of Isaiah Jones, who imagines an ordinary domestic dialogue as an extraordinary sequence of etchings with text-as-image.  In these prints, her hand lettered phrases could be spoken or thought by anyone, with the effect of shouts and whispers, as threads of dialogue repeat and spiral into graphic recombinations, as words are redacted, erased, and layered as if echoing memory and visualizing sentences in space.   The narrative allows for relationships to grow, then deteriorate, emphatic declarations become misunderstandings, exploring and voicing inner expressions of desire and anxiety.

Jones created her prints through the etching process, which uses acid to bite into a copper plate.   Areas are preserved with acid resistant grounds while open areas are allowed to etch below the surface, which is where the image is developed.   During printing, the plate holds the ink in the etched textured areas, while the unetched areas are wiped clean.   The plate and paper are run through the press under great pressure to cause the transfer of ink to the paper.    Additionally, Jones further worked the plate by using tools to burnish or scrap the image away, leaving a “history” of what was once there, while new areas were also etched into the plate, for a sense of layering and continual evolution.  The print is the record of her actions, allowing the storytelling to “hang in the air”.  Jones’ print series has a sense of urgency as the quantity of impressions alone demonstrates a “give and take” of flowing ideas and importance of communication.

Isaiah Jones is a Lincoln artist and recent graduate of UNL with an MFA degree. Jones was raised in the mountains of western North Carolina, and earned her BFA in Printmaking from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2015.  She has exhibited her work locally and served as the master printer to guest artists in Lincoln, Atlanta and Savannah. Jones utilizes traditional printmaking, language, and storytelling to create individual prints and large-scale installations.