This exhibition presents the power of letters impressed into paper to print text for posters, prints, bookworks, and broadsides. These works are drawn from the Constellation Studios collection and includes poetry, images, and timely assertions, as beautifully crafted objects, or ephemera from events or announcements. These are captivating for the graphic nature and physical dimension of the printing, hand-produced by a variety of artists and designers.
For 500 years, from Gutenberg to the 1960’s, movable type of metal and wood held sway, yet printing technologies evolved to offset lithography and digital processes, which are more commercially prevalent now. This left space for the renaissance of letterpress today, as artists and designers use the “reclaimed” metal and wood type and vintage presses for quality and hands-on directness. Now this historic printing technology moves into the 21st Century as artists strive to maintain and preserve the cultural legacy of fine press printing while advancing it as a living art form, becoming self-publishers that embody the power of the press, literally.
The exhibition is curated by Kyle Nobles, assistant at Constellation Studios.
A steamroller printing event of the large woodblocks carved by the Nine Nebraska Artists will be held at the LUX Center for the Arts on August 15th, 2020 from 1-4pm. Other artists are invited to join with additional woodblocks for the steamroller printing demonstration.
#NineNebraskaArtists
This mural project is in conjunction with “Surface Impressions” – International Juried Print Exhibition.
Juror: Mark Pascale
Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator of Prints and Drawings, The Art Institute of Chicago
co-organized by Constellation Studios and Lux Art Center
First Friday June 5,
visit by appointment 12noon – 8pm
Call 402-438-0049 or
email: karen@constellation-studios.net
June 11, 6-7pm Facebook Live from LUX Facebook – Curator Talk – Mark Pascale
June 13, 10 – 11am 2020 –Coffee with the Curators – Mark Pascale and Susan Soriente, Zoom
summer 2020 – events, workshops, steamroller printing all TBA
Surface Impressions intends to connect artists and audiences to the 21st century language of relief printmaking as a viable engagement for today.
The exhibition includes 75 works from 67 national and international artists, with a selection at both Constellation Studios and Lux Art Center galleries. All the prints use relief-printing processes of woodcut, linoleum block, wood engraving, letterpress, and new technologies including laser cutting.
There is a distinctive graphic nature to prints made from carved surfaces as the energy of carving with gouges and burins is readily apparent. This action is transformed by pressure and ink onto paper which reveals light “opened up” from the solid surface. Artists are endlessly inventive with how the surface is changed, as well as with their innovations for printing from blocks, from essential black and white, to multiple layers of color and carving stages, to how the printing happens with presses or by hand. Relief prints use available materials for protest and actions, exist on large scale for impact, capture impressions of wood growth, and show intimate carved details on the end-grain of wood.
This inaugural biennial of relief prints here in the center of America showcases 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 process but newly invigorated discipline as it is practiced and defined by today’s artists.
Light Prints explores the natural intersection of prints and photography as a means to record “outside” information onto paper. Light-sensitive coatings onto paper are exposed with objects or transparencies blocking ultraviolet light leaving a silhouette image that seems to “capture” the moment and the ghost of the object. These artists have used this historic process to record collected objects, the shift of time, and the nostalgia of memorabilia. Cyanotypes are known for the rich Prussian blue of the iron-based inorganic colorant, the first synthetic pigment, and used for blueprints, and in Japanese woodblock prints, suggesting mystery and transience.
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.
This intensive, exciting workshop will awaken the possibilities for the woodcut printing process for the beginning and advanced printmaker. This approach is not technically tradition-bound…but 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. Participants will go from designing their images and cutting blocks, to printing several projects using a variety of methods and individual discoveries. For all levels.
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.
This invitational show presents the link between graphic cartooning, tattoo design, classic comics, manga, anime, detailed grotesque ornamentation and fantasy drawing styles that are sources for expression and distillation by contemporary print artists today. This popular “low art world” crosses generations and genres, usually outside the fine art world, and artists respond with irony, visual puns, horror vacui compositions, and technical bravura. This exhibition celebrates the spirit of imagination and skepticism, creative play, and topical messages. Works in print media, book forms and drawing will be included.
This invitational show presents the link between graphic cartooning, tattoo design, classic comics, manga, anime, detailed grotesque ornamentation and fantasy drawing styles that are sources for expression and distillation by contemporary print artists today. This popular “low art world” crosses generations and genres, usually outside the fine art world, and artists respond with irony, visual puns, horror vacui compositions, and technical bravura. This exhibition celebrates the spirit of imagination and skepticism, creative play, and topical messages. Works in print media, book forms and drawing will be included.
Images of plants and architecture from botanical gardens investigate sites and histories, highlighting the complicated cultural construction of an idea of “nature”. The digital and hand drawn print processes explore how our interactions with the natural world are mediated through technology, and are thus fragmented and selective. Through her work, the forms are remixed through the filters of printmaking, drawing, digital photography, and collage. This installation includes prints and Hanging Gardens, a large-scale banner with pigment printing on thin Awagami Inbe paper that has been intricately cut, creating interplay between light and shadows within the environment of the gallery.
Taryn McMahon received her BFA from The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, and an MA and MFA from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. She has received numerous awards for her work including the Southern Graphics Council International Graduate Fellowship and residencies at Anderson Ranch Art Center, Anchor Graphics, Women’s Studio Workshop, and the Lawrence Arts Center. Her work has been featured in recent exhibitions at The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA and Carroll Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, among others. She is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Kent State University.
Images of plants and architecture from botanical gardens investigate sites and histories, highlighting the complicated cultural construction of an idea of “nature”. The digital and hand drawn print processes explore how our interactions with the natural world are mediated through technology, and are thus fragmented and selective. Through her work, the forms are remixed through the filters of printmaking, drawing, digital photography, and collage. This installation includes prints and Hanging Gardens, a large-scale banner with pigment printing on thin Awagami Inbe paper that has been intricately cut, creating interplay between light and shadows within the environment of the gallery.
Taryn McMahon received her BFA from The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, and an MA and MFA from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. She has received numerous awards for her work including the Southern Graphics Council International Graduate Fellowship and residencies at Anderson Ranch Art Center, Anchor Graphics, Women’s Studio Workshop, and the Lawrence Arts Center. Her work has been featured in recent exhibitions at The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA and Carroll Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, among others. She is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Kent State University.
