Saddleback College Steamroller Printmaking Event Rolls Out

A Review byVanessa Donofrio

4/29/14

              Saddleback Steamroller Woodblock Party

Held in the Theater Circle at Saddleback College, this printmakers dream is a must and a delight to experience. Every printmaker has got to try it at least once. I guarantee you will be counting the days until the next time the steamroller’s back in town. Vinita Voogd and Rick Reese, the two Saddleback printmaking professors, and their printmaking students hosted this sweet event. The Dean of the Fine Arts and Media Technology, Bart McHenry, was also there to take part in the festivities and carved a mini plate. There were Easy-Ups to shade the students while they rolled ink over their woodblocks. There were also other shady spots for guests to carve out a mini woodblock and have it printed on a turquoise shirt (also the color of the team shirts this year). There was a section set up for printmaking students to sell some of their prints. Vinita, Rick, and some students got to drive the steamroller over these wooden images. BFK, Stonehenge and tapestries were used to print on, with packing blankets and rubber carpet pads used in place of the traditional catcher, cushion, and pusher blankets/felts. These life size wood blocks were cut with a number of different carving tools such as Speedball tools, motorized Dremels, and other woodcutting tools. The Saddleback radio station, KSBR, had this event on the radio and held interviews with students and Vinita. There was a yummy food truck to keep us fed. It was an awesome time. I enjoyed seeing Vinita and Rick and my former classmates from Saddleback again. I was very much inspired by the amazing images and hard work put into them. I can’t wait until next year. Thank you Vinita, Rick, and Saddleback Print students for a fabulous woodblock party!

Tea and Morphine: Women in Paris, 1880 to 1914 - at the Hammer

Tea and Morphine: Women in Paris, 1880 to 1914 Helen Cox 2/24/14
At the Hammer, UCLA - The exhibition runs until May 18th, 2014

This was an impressive exhibit, both for the prints – which included some by Cassatt, Redon, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and Vuillard – and for the information about the plight of women at the beginning of the twentieth century.  According to the exhibit catalogue, a woman had no right to vote or to own property.  Upon her marriage, any assets she did have became the property of her husband.  He could commit adultery with impunity; she could not.  Job opportunities for women were few, but they could become prostitutes, since that was legal.   It was small wonder that morphine, a derivative from opium, had a fatal attraction for many.

The images could be divided into three main categories:  woman as an evil and seductive influence (femme fatale); woman as domestic and refined; and woman as desperate and distraught.  Perhaps the artist who most effectively captured the dilemma of women was Albert Besnard in his twelve etchings depicting women in situations ranging from wealth to poverty, from being in love to being raped, from suffering drug addiction and prostitution to the death of a child.  Some might consider his images a bit melodramatic; I found them sobering and powerful.

The Art Nouveau prints were classic, filled with beautiful, curved, sinuous lines while depicting drug induced states, acid throwing, and shooting up!  What a contradiction between the form and the content!

I chose to include an image from Albert Besnard, Suicide, because I appreciate his use of positive and negative space.  The white of the snow forms a strong diagonal across the composition, a sharp form that echoes the despair of the woman.  She blends into the dark and the darkness of her pain, an unseen form easily ignored by the passing coach.  The lights of the city sparkle in the background; that such beauty and agony coexist is one of the fundamental contradictions in life.  The use of the vertical lines in the etching reinforces the sense of snow and cold, and her plunge into the river below.
Many of the better prints demonstrated an interesting arrangement of positive and negative shapes.  There were a few faded images that did not look resolved.  Most were etchings and lithographs, with an occasional woodblock or linoleum cut.

It is a bit of a drive to get to the Hammer, but the exhibit was well worth it.  There is also an excellent collection of paintings in the next room, including Daumier, Van Gogh, Vuillard, and Rembrandt.  If you go on the weekend parking is only $3.00 and you are close to the Getty.  Go with a friend and the carpool lane gets you home in decent time if you leave by 3:30 p.m.

Exhibition at the UAM on the CSULB campus - A review of "Traditions Transfigured: The Noh Masks of Bidou Yamaguchi" by Helen Cox

The author of this post

Thoughts on Traditions Transfigured:  The Noh Masks of Bidou Yamaguchi

Review by Helen Cox, January 28, 2014

 I knew nothing of Noh Masks when I went to the gallery, so I read the signs.  I was struck by the goal of the masks:  “incremental innovation within tradition.”  By allowing innovation, there is room for creation and evolving art forms, instead of the emptiness and stagnation in repetition.

 The craftsmanship in the masks is superb.  Innovations are left for the creative aspects; there are strict rules for the craft.  Apparently the use of sandpaper is considered cheating, so the artists who carve these very smooth masks have to be highly skilled and patient.  Their skills extend to painting.  Each strand of hair must be painted with one brush stroke so the thickness of the hair does not change, as it would if the brush were lifted and then replaced.  I can imagine the hours of practice required!  After all that careful work, the masks are then stressed with a brush and a secret formula, to make them look old.

First on display is Yamaguchi’s skill in the traditional art form. Then, the artist became interested in transforming two-dimensional Japanese images into three-dimensional masks. Not only did he apply the Noh mask craft to something new, but he demonstrated innovation within the construction of the mask, employing a modern interpretation to facial features. For example, the nose on the Sharaku print mask is bent to the side, as it was drawn in the three-quarter view of the print. The mouths of the women end half-way across the face. This distortion is meaningful, not random. When viewed from a particular perspective, the mask looks identical to the print or painting.

This woodcut Actor Print is on display with masks, Sharaku, Japan, Oban size, circa 1794

In his third stage, Yamaguchi transformed female icons from European art into Noh masks.  He hit all the big ones:   DaVinci, Vermeer, Velasquez, Münch, Botticelli, etc.  His recreation of the Mona Lisa was spectacular.  I enjoyed the mask more than I enjoyed the original painting (seen ten feet away, through glass and surrounded by idiots with their phone cameras who did not even look at the painting).   He brought back the element in the Mona Lisa that got art historians so excited about the image, before it became a cliché of itself.

 When he created the European art, he even matched the brush strokes to those in the paintings, and of course he aged them in proper Noh tradition.  Some of his innovations were not as successful.  He missed the delicate sensuality of the lips in the Vermeer portrait and made them too red and sloppy, as though her lipstick smeared.  Her tongue is grotesque.  Maria Teresa (Velasquez) had a more bulbous nose and her lips were not quite so turned up; in the mask, she was given a “nose job” which took away some of her personality.  Overall, however, the masks were fantastic, alive, and beautiful.  It was a wonderful way to re-experience images that have become overly familiar.

Note from RS - This notable exhibition will be on display at the UAM until April 13th & was curated under the guidance of Professor Kendall Brown (Interim Director of the Museum Studies Program) by Art History graduate students Karenina Karyodi, Lauren Nochalla, Kristy Odett & Ariana Rizo. A published catalogue accompanies the exhibition & is on sale at the University Art Museum. 

Los Angeles 2013 Printers Fair

Despite the heat there was a big turnout, Saturday, October 5 for the 5^th Annual Los Angeles Printers Fair.  According to the program the event is the largest letterpress event of its kind in the US.

Kevin Bradley of Church of Type was the guest artist of the fair and demonstrated on a Vandercook Press.

I stopped at CSULB MFA Alumni Camilla Taylor (http://www.camilla-taylor.com ) and Erynn Richardson‘s (http://www.erynnrichardson.com  ) booth specializing in quality handmade and printed ephemera – and came away with some of Camilla’s very cool bumble bee wing earrings. 

On a side note…..if you have time it is well worth checking out Camilla’s blog on cutting linoleum scraps....  http://horsefleshproductions.blogspot.com/2012/07/catman-print-from-linoleum-scraps.html

But back to the fair -- also among the many exhibitors was another CSULB BFA graduate, Alex Fridrich, representing Angels Gate Cultural Center (http://www.angelsgateart.org/).  Angels Gate in San Pedro is a fully equipped printmaking studio for intaglio, relief, monotype and silkscreen printing.

The International Museum of Printing  which celebrates its 25^th anniversary this year is located at 315 W Torrance Blvd, Carson, CA 90745 310-515-7166 and is open throughout the year.  http://www.printmuseum.org

Rethinking the Multiple, An Exhibition at Occidental College

This sure-to-be-spectacular exhibition opens in Los Angeles' Weingart Gallery on the campus of Occidental College, Wednesday 10/9.  From 5 - 8 PM, there will be an installation performance provided by Paul Mullowney, one of the artists whose work is being displayed. (I'm assuming both the seriously long toes, and the image they stand upon belong to him.)
The other three artists are also exceptionally quite fine - Lynne Allen teaches printmaking at  Rutgers University in New Jersey, and uses non-traditional materials to create prints that investigate her Native American heritage.
Phyllis McGibbon, another East Coast denizen, holds forth on the same subject at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and is a fellow Dürer enthusiast. Her visual work is largely concerned with how printed images manage to "dis"locate and time travel between artists, physical locations, and cultures. (Sounds like the theme of every one of my three hour lectures...) The gleaming baton below, while appearing to be machine tooled, is a rolled copper plate with an image of Dürer's etched into it. The piece glitters on so very many varied levels.
Fred Hagstrom teaches at Carleton College in the great white north of  Minnesota. His artist's statement ends with these two lovely lines - "I want to see the art world become more concerned with passionately held beliefs and beauty, and less concerned with irony or market based strategies. I believe that art should be a part of people's lives, and that it has the power to change the way we view the world."

Directions may be located by visiting: http://www.oxy.edu/page/maps-directions
Should you find yourself at that venue, do let Linda Lyke know that I send my regards.

Soma and Breath: Work by Tim Musso and Camilla Taylor

OPENING RECEPTION October 3, Thursday 6pm
EXHIBITION DATES October 3 – October 29, 2013

"A two person show at the art gallery of Cal Baptist University in Riverside, CA, featuring the artwork of Camilla Taylor and Tim Musso. Coinciding with the Riverside Artwalk."

Both Camilla Taylor and Tim Musso are CSULB alumni, whose main medium is printmaking. When you hear a word 'printmaking' and only think of a nice little image on a small piece of paper, I can assure you that you will probably be caught off guard by those two artists. I will dare not to describe too much about them, but if you are planning on not experiencing their works in person, all I want to tell you is that you might be missing something incredibly amazing.

CBU GALLERY
3737 Main Street Riverside
Suite 101

https://www.facebook.com/events/709481519066324

Untitled II, Tim Musso

Homage to Ernst Haeckel, Tim Musso

The Crowd (Installation View), Camilla Taylor

The Crowd I, Camilla Taylor

https://www.facebook.com/events/709481519066324

NEWTON'S THIRD: A Karmic Interpretation

Opening Reception Oct 12, 2013 7–10PM

Oct 12–Oct 26, 2013

This is a big group exhibition with works inspired by "duality, connectivity, and universal balance". Many of the featured artists are CSULB alumni, some MFA printmaking, MFA/BFA illustration, etc.

Location

F+ Gallery

661 Poinsettia St., Santa Ana, California 92701

Curator 

Jennie Cotterill

Artists

Aaron Brown | Alex Gardner  | Autumn Buck | Camilla Taylor | Catherine Yi | Chanta deFelice | Corrie Walton | C.R. Stecyk !!! | Diana Danielis | Fred Rose | Javier Beltran | Jennifer Reifsneider | Josh Grelock | Julius Tanag | McLean Fahnestock | Megan LeMaster | Micah Kersh | Nancy Chiu | Nicole Goux | Nicole Sloan | Patti McCandless | Paul Alvarez III | Paul Aguilera | Sara M Lyons | Steven Pillai | Susanne Melanie Berry | Trace Mendoza | Ya-el Pedroza | Yevgeniya Mikhailik 

Facebook Page

https://www.facebook.com/events/432532813525674/