Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries are pleased to present Multiple Impressions: Voices in Contemporary Printmaking. This group exhibition features the work of Lamar Dodd School of Art professors Melissa Harshman and Rick Johnson, visiting professor Shelly DiCello and assistant professor Margot Ecke, in addition to the work of four renowned American printmakers invited by the faculty. Multiple Impressions opens on Jan. 16 with an artists’ reception from 7-9 p.m. at the Broad Street Gallery and will remain on view through Feb. 23.
Invited artists include Lisa Bulawsky (associate professor, Washington University School of Art and director of Vertigo Press), Holly Morrison (associate professor, Cleveland Institute of Art and co-director of Idlewild Press), Heather O’Hara (visiting assistant professor, Cornell University and editor/designer at Plunger Press), and John Risseeuw (professor, Arizona State University and director of Pyracantha Press).
Multiple Impressions delivers a contemporary view of the culture and product of printmaking. Exploring the fantastic, the ambiguous, the political, and the quotidian, this exhibition gives audiences the opportunity to see one medium from eight distinct vantage points, establishing perspective on issues, themes and methods of contemporary printmaking. Multiple Impressions offers a multi-faceted view of printmaking today.
Themes and agendas in the bodies of work on exhibition include political statements, aesthetic statements, and journeys and mediations on history, memory and visual appropriations. Each artist contributes to these themes in both process and product. Risseeuw and O’Hara lend recent works created in response to the United States’ current political administration. Risseeuw contributes by way of artist’s books and O’Hara contributes with finely detailed woodcuts. Johnson exhibits elegant books inspired by his travels in Italy. Harshman’s prints have the layered impression of collage, making use of appropriated 1950s-era imagery. DiCello employs several printmaking processes, yielding rich, fanciful landscapes. Bulawsky explores connections between the personal and cultural constructs of history in her Flashbulb Memories of vivid shapes, colors and words. Morrison’s poetic marriage of text and photogravure images creates a metaphorical visual aquifer in conventional book form to express her ideas while Ecke’s use of traditional bookbinding techniques to create works that redefine the definition of a book challenges the viewer to reconsider the possibilities of expression through the use of the written page. The strength of Multiple Impressions lies in the combined resonance of the works on exhibition and the proof of a broad range of expressions in contemporary printmaking practice.
All Broad Street Gallery events are free and open to the public. The Broad Street Gallery is located at the Broad Street Studios Complex, at 257 West Broad Street, in Athens, Georgia. Broad Street Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. For further information, please contact Nora Wendl, gallery director, Lamar Dodd School of Art at 706/542-0069 or nwendl@uga.edu or visit www.art.uga.edu.
