From Durer to Digital and 3-D

From Dürer to Digital and 3-D

The Metamorphosis of the Printed Image

Eric Avery, Paradise Lost

March 8 – April 28, 2019

Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 2 pm — Artists Panel Discussion

Burko, Gelles, Hohmuth-Lemonick, and White

Review by Janet Purcell: Read Here

Please note: Joan Perkes, quoted in the article, is President of the Board of Trustees.

Review by Dan Aubrey in US1: Read Here

Eileen Hohmuth-Lemonick, Hair and Eye

Artists:
Diane Burko with Anna Tas
Judy Gelles
Eileen Hohmuth-Lemonick
N-e-r-v-o-u-s S-y-s-t-e-m, I-n-c
Anne Spalter
Wendel White
Evan Wolarsky
Helen Zajkowski

Judy Gelles, The Fourth Grade Project, South Africa

Artists from the Brodsky Center at PAFA
Eric Avery
Willie Birch
Frank Bowling
Willie Cole
Maria Gutierrez
Barkley Hendricks
Margo Humphrey
Kiki Smith

Printmaking in the Western World came into existence in the 15^th century when Gutenberg invented movable type. His invention transformed the way in which we acquire knowledge. Instead of the oral tradition by which cultures were transmitted, books and reading became the means of transmission. The printed word conveyed knowledge, but not sufficiently. It required an image. And thus printmaking was born. The first prints were wood and metal engravings done as illustrations to the texts in the new form of the book.

The printed image has always been at the leading edge of culture but also of technology. Albrecht Durer, for instance, was the first artist to make a printing plate by using acid to create the image in the plate rather than to cut it by hand. From Rembrandt to Picasso, artists whose impact shaped the history of the visual arts used printmaking to try out their ideas.

Wood and metal engraving evolved into elaborate printing methods that allowed the artist to print in color or to make black and white images that included the full range of grays. Artists were constantly inventing new ways to create a matrix that could be printed multiple times, thus expanding the reach of an artist’s work beyond the unique image. Lithography was invented at the end of the 18^th century in Germany. The mezzotint was invented at about the same time and is often said to be the mode that led to the invention of photography, the essence of which is an endless array of grays from white to black.

Today, the photograph is giving way to a whole panoply of experimentation with new printing techniques. Video and film are basically descended from printmaking if one defines printmaking as a way of creating a reproducible image. And the list of contemporary descendant techniques from the printed image includes such new methods as 3D printing and the lenticular image.

The goal of this exhibition is to make visible the metamorphosis of the printed image. It is divided into three sections. The first section includes an example of the work of eight contemporary artists who are using the traditional modes of printmaking such as wood cut, lithography, and etching in creating their art. The second section consists of three photographers whose work demonstrates the various uses of photography. And the third section includes two individual artists and two collaborative pair of artists who are experimenting with new forms of the printed image such as holograms (lenticular imaging), video prints, installation, and 3-D printing.

Wendell White, Baby Dolls, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, NMAAHC, Washington, DC

Four artists in the exhibition, From Durer to Digital and 3D:  The Metamorphosis of the Printed Image, will talk about their work in the exhibition and about their artistic practice at 2 pm on Sunday, April 14, at Ellarslie, Trenton City Museum.  The artists are Diane Burko and Judy Gelles, both from Philadelphia; Anne Spalter, from Brooklyn; and Wendel White, Stockton State University, New Jersey. Burko’s pieces in the show are lenticular photographs–commonly called holograms. Burko uses the technique  which changes the image as you walk past it, to comment on climate change.  Gelles will talk about her adventures traveling globally to interview and photograph children in the fourth grade worldwide.  Anne Spalter’s work in the exhibition consists of two video/prints. Each lasts about ten minutes.  While we may think of them as videos. she considers them prints that move in time as well as in space.  And last, Wendel White will talk about how he has used photography to document and make visible, the landscape, built environment, and material culture of African American communities long lost to history.  Judith K. Brodsky, founder of the eponymous printmaking and papermaking center, now located at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, will moderate.