New Impressions
March 26 - May 1, 2021
Visit In-Person: March 26 - May 1 during Gallery Hours: Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, 11 am - 3 pm + Thursday, 11 am - 7 pm or by appointment by calling 401.560.0979.
Explore Online: Browse the artist's collections below or visit the online Exhibition Store.
Related Events: Check out Virtual and In-Person Artists’ Talks + Workshops with the printmakers
New Impressions gives us a chance to see what sixteen Rhode Island printmakers have been up to, of late.
The sea is an ever-present preoccupation of Rhode Island artists; our seascapes are often prized. A 19th century Mackerel Cove view by Jamestown’s William Trost Richards, for example, sold at auction a while back for well over a million dollars. Fast-forwarding to now, our artists ask us to see the sea in ways inconceivable to past artists. Pushing us really hard in this direction are the breathtaking seascape dreams of Allison Bianco. Her often fluorescing and solarizing trips to the beach are testament to the power of a few small well-placed printed gestures in and amongst brilliant color bombs.
Right where Trost Richards painted the sea, Peter Marcus sends giantized utilitarian-like things meandering about historic Horsehead, interspersed with action painted gray drips, all in an exercise of well-worked contrasts. Meanwhile, Josy Wright makes evocative prints of celestial and generative themes.
We are directed to look down on the ocean too, using the navigational map Annie DeBethune put to work in her intense and mass-mediated collotypes. We get taken underwater in Mary Jameson’s cyanotype Kelp, and see the unseeable ocean current.
Edwige Charlot, using silkscreen and wax, realizes water’s translucent aspects and then with printed fabric and thread assembles her way to further printmaking success. Nancy Friese shows us how important it is to work at making a dense and beautiful lithograph of which Seacoast View is one example.
Other artists who show us fresh aspects of the sea don’t start with manufactured paper as the base ingredient of their paper prints. Rather, Joan Hall deftly uses elaborate pulped substrates for her aquatic assemblages.
Barbara Pagh starts with handmade paper too, and it’s the perfect base for her powerful stroboscopic intervals of Matunuck.
Back on land, Andrew Raftery resurrects 18th century bespoke wallpaper that would have pleased the most discerning whale ship captain in his crazy-good and technically brilliant Wallpapers. Complementing these lush and complicated letterpress papers are his transfer printed engravings on plates reminiscent of antique export porcelain. These captivating plates masterfully draw psychological tension out of mundane scenes and conjure historical figures as disparate as Grant Wood and H.P. Lovecraft.
Serena Perrone beautifully forces us, invoking Corot and Barthes, into a lens perspective in her old-new screen-prints. Her use of frame is off the charts. Lisa Barsumian uses printmaking to explore both flatness and fast flowing acrylic in her sublime botanicals. Kate Aitchison loads on dense color saturations to realize a rich Pawtucket Bridge, among other works.
Then, gazing inwards, our final group of printmakers are joined together in their refusal of both coherent representation and abstraction. Kelsey Miller’s monoprints do so with beauty and grace, Laurie Sloan’s prints with playful deconstructed puzzle pieces, and Casey Weibust’s with re-narrated horrors—in particular, the impressive shock of little riding hood’s red.
These sixteen Rhode Island printmakers in New Impressions, taken together, are inspiring advocates for the importance of making new impressions.
Michael Dym, Curator
Michael Dym, is a principal of Vallot Auctioneers, a Providence-based auction house of fine art, amongst other things. He has been involved with furthering the work of numerous fine art organizations over several decades. He was a founding member and longtime board member of the Print Club of New York, a NYC print collecting club whose publication prints are now in the collection of MoMa as well as other important institutional print collections. Michael, a Jamestown, RI resident, also lends his expertise and insight on the Exhibition Committee at the JAC.
Watch a virtual tour of the exhibition with Michael Dym on Instagram.
Online Gallery
Click on each artist to view their work
Homepage image: Allison Bianco, Golden Hour, 2020, intaglio, screen print, and hot foil stamp, 10 x 22 inches, edition of 7. Printed by the artist and Lois Harada at DWRI Letterpress. Courtesy Cade Tompkins Projects.