Exhibition, at three venues at 808 Comm Ave, seeks to move printmaking “beyond the two-dimensional plane”
Cyanotype. Woodcut. Screenprint. Mezzotint. Linocut. Lithograph. Intaglio. Collograph.
According to Deborah Cornell, it’s the multitude of techniques that sets the field of printmaking apart from other art forms.
“This is an area of artmaking that really broadens the expression of art—it’s an ancient medium, but it’s also incredibly new all the time,” says Cornell, a College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts professor of art and chair of the SVA printmaking program. “We’re still finding terms for new media that we have within printmaking.”
Cornell, a board member of the Boston Printmakers, an international association based in Boston, was instrumental, along with Renee Covalucci (CFA’84,‘85), president of the Printmakers board, in bringing the group’s annual North American Print Biennial back to BU after a decade. The first Boston Printmakers Biennial held at BU was place in 1997, and over the years, the biennials have been held at Lesley University and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, among other locales.
(left) Judy Haberl, Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope), Judy Haberl; monotype on Hahnemuhle paper on aluminum. (right) 1921, Justyne Fischer; woodcut on voile with stain, wax, burned pine fence picket
The centerpiece of this year’s biennial show, presented by BU Art Galleries in collaboration with the School of Visual Arts, is a juried exhibition at the 808 Gallery featuring nearly 130 works by artists engaged in every modality of printmaking—from centuries-old traditions to contemporary technology to processes of their own invention.
“The juried exhibition is not thematic, but what I find really exciting is that it surveys the things that are generally on artists’ minds in a contemporary way,” Cornell says. “You see a lot of what artists are attempting in printmaking in general—the borders of our medium are always shifting, and there are always innovations that are happening.”
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the Boston Printmakers Biennial, there are also two smaller exhibitions accompanying the main jury show: Legacies of Leadership in the main hall outside the gallery and Disciplines of the Spirit on the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground second floor. All three shows are on view through December 9 at 808 Comm Ave.
The juried exhibition in the 808 Gallery features an almost dizzying array of contemporary prints that Cornell says is a comprehensive tour of modern printmaking—each entry was completed no earlier than 2020. Juried by Elizabeth Rudy, Harvard Art Museums Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, the works force the viewer to consider the manifold properties of printmaking, in particular its dimensionality and malleability.
This is an area of artmaking that really broadens the expression of art… We’re still finding terms for new media that we have within printmaking.
“I…strove to create a dynamic visual experience for visitors to the exhibition by including works that would be displayed on pedestals or hanging from the ceiling, so that the visitor might appreciate how these artists are thinking creatively about the definition of a ‘print,’ often beyond the two-dimensional plane,” Rudy says of her selection process.
The juried show includes installations, sculptures, and textiles, among them Judy Haberl’s Dum Spiro Spero (While I Breathe, I Hope)—a cluster of flat aluminum discs covered with lacy, deep-blue monotypes—and Justyne Fischer’s 1921—a woodcut on sheer fabric, depicting the 1921 Tulsa, Okla., race massacre by white rioters that killed nearly 300.
And even the two-dimensional pieces on display impart a sense of physicality—the more time a visitor spends at the juried exhibition, the clearer it is that printmaking in its various disciplines is a visceral, tactile process.
“I think about my process as if I were reaching out with my body and touching the stuff that I’m drawing, and the neuropsychology of perception [says] that that’s exactly what you do when you look at something,” says Bill Brody, whose woodcut Reaching Out with the Mind’s Body is in the show.
The linework in Brody’s Reaching Out creates a delicate skein of curling smoke and licking flames, which offsets the more overt texturing seen in Chloe Alexander’s Catch And Release, this year’s 75th Anniversary Prize awardee. The piece is a linocut—where an artist engraves a piece of linoleum before inking and rolling it onto a secondary surface, as with a woodcut—and depicts two youths releasing insects from glass jars. Alexander’s process cannot be separated from her end result: gouges made to represent sky, skin, wood, and plant matter crowd for attention, creating an assemblage of textures that run up against one another like sections of a patchwork quilt. Reaching Out, on the other hand, is a study of fine-grained compositional shifts.
(left) Reaching Out with the Mind’s Body, Bill Brody; Woodcut (right) Catch and Release, Chloe Alexander; linocut
Disciplines of the Spirit, on the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground second floor, next door to the 808 Gallery, takes its name from Thurman’s 1963 treatise on spiritual life. Curated by Covalucci, the works reflect on the association’s first members show, in 1948, which featured working-class and Black artists from Boston and surrounding communities. In homage to the legacies left by members such as Alan Rohan Crite and John Woodrow Wilson, a CFA professor emeritus, who died in 2015, Disciplines of the Spirit includes pieces that primarily reflect contemporary and historical Black narratives.
“This exhibition praises the Boston Printmakers’ commitment to democracy, equality, and opportunity for all as reflected in the inclusivity of its members,” Covalucci writes in a gallery statement.
Legacies of Leadership, the other accompanying exhibition, was curated by Cornell and Joshua Brennan, a CFA lecturer and technical associate in printmaking. The exhibition’s 28 works are by 24 artists who were vital to the Printmakers’ longevity and remain stakeholders in its future. Works by featured artists—including current board members, past presidents and leaders, and Cornell and Covalucci—span decades and techniques, and many of the artists were on hand during the reception weekend, mingling with fellow practitioners from across North America. Cornell, who was in charge of generating gallery text for Legacies, says she was touched when she reached out to the artists for more information.
“I thought people would just be giving me label information—’I joined in 19-whatever and I’ve been doing this and that on the board,’” she says. “What I got was an overwhelming sense of warmth: things like, ‘This is my family.’ It’s really amazing how worthwhile they feel that it’s all been.”
The 75th Annual Boston Printmakers North American Print Biennial is on view through December 9 at the 808 Gallery, 808 Comm Ave and is free and open to the public. Hours: 11 am to 5 pm Tuesday through Saturday. Find a full schedule of Print Biennial events here.