Susanna Crum's Print Technology Revisiting Victorian Era

According to Susanna Crum's thematic statement "Guardians: Care-taking and Place-making on St. James Court" explores the definition of personal identity and connection to place as a person "revives and revises" the history of his or her own home.

The place she's chosen to describe for this multi-media series is a circular row of Victorian homes called St. James Court, in  Louisville, Kentucky, built around the world's exposition of 1883. Crum photographed the homes, and then conducted a series of interviews with their owners,  and preservationists intent on preserving that aspect of the town's heritage. What she presents before us, and what is seen at the Mid America Print Council exhibition, is a print which gives an bird's eye view of the St. James Circle, and the south end of the world's fair area.  She has located and blown up, in circled areas, the homes she was intent to discuss. 

This is only one aspect of Crum's multi-media presentation of the series; which  includes a group of  phone boxes, each containing a photograph of one of the homes with a telephone. The phone's recording  is of a group of preservationists and home owners talking about the importance of saving these historic structures. Why the interest in this topic? Well, Crum grew up in Louisville, and has a long-standing interest in preserving old things, the poetic 'goings'-on inside boxes and containers, and creating a conceptual engagement. 

Crum is trying to stretch the parameters of printmaking with this multi-media approach, and she is fast gaining interest. The question to ask is only whether these multi-media projects necessitate the use of printmaking  to complete her ideas. Her interest in bringing back older methods of presentations - like the photo view finders, is welcome, and the combination with well-crafted presentations is also welcome. I do not see that her use of printmaking is the main component to this work, but a total integration of media, which is welcome most of all.

Jeremy Lundquist Showing off Text-ural Prints at the MAPC show

Pondering the meaning of Lundquist's broken phrases and written verse is at first perplexing. I've seen several people stop at his triptych at the Mid America Print Council show and read the words he's arranged for the reader to decipher. They sometimes try to figure out which verses of prose they must originate from, and then I see them cock their heads to the side in consternation, confusion and sometimes frustration.  Lundquist doesn't present an easy answer, or an easy reading of the text for the viewer and that is the point. He is presenting a statement,  and as I have also considered his piece, I find it can be multi-layered in context and meaning.  

On the first go around, the phrases are chopped up, broken, in fact. The viewer wants to read them, but can't figure out if it's to be read across the triptych, or down the triptych. Either way, it seems to be missing key words. The viewer wants to connect the words like a series of dots, but is kept from the easy assembly by Lundquist's arrangement of text. The letters are heavily embossed and singularly printed, which goes against the history of printed book text, which is regimented and uniform, printable for multiple printings. Here the printing is more organic in the inking, one gets the understanding that the arrangement can be re-configured differently each time. 

Lundquist states that his 'prints deal with collaged paper and  examine and organize decay. The result is a body of work that questions contemporary notions of progress and cleanliness by presenting images and texts of loss and disillusion.' drawnlots.com/jeremy That seems true enough, so is he making a statement of the decay of society in general - that younger generations aren't reading books? Is he saying that they aren't interested in great prose, or that they are missing the texture and sensual pleasure of turning a printed page of words found in a leather-bound book? That seems plausible. 

What I get from Lundquist's work is the sense that we as a society are missing key parts of our history - our history of book-reading, and our sense of what it is to be human - to read a finely-written text, savor the touch of the paper, the feel of the lettering as it embosses the paper from a hand-pulled press, and the indulgent pleasure of quietly curling up in a corner to let one's imagination soar with the author of a poem or fiction or an historical novel. 

Our heritage as human-kind transitions to viewing text and stories via the internet, using keyboards that change text with the click of a button and  the joy of reading at one's leisure is losing ground to the availability of our electricity outlets and batteries being charged. We're losing the sense of reading and the joy one takes from it. I think Lundquist is making us look at what we've had - and still have available to us-  and he's telling us not to forget reading is knowledge and with it comes the freedom to do all things - as aspired the artists and philosophers from ancient Greece and  the Italian Renaissance. So, let us not forget the beauty of a well-crafted book,  the connection of one to other's thoughts, or the sublime experience in the turn of a phrase. Let us rejoice in reading, and what comes from knowing oneself through the written word. 

Karla Hackenmiller's "Liminal" Works sparkle at the MAPC Show

Karla Hakenmiller's two prints called "Liminal Twist" and "Liminal Passing" are two prints whose linear interweaving and overlap at first remind us of balls of unraveling yarn, or parts of knitting/sewing gone awry. the pulling apart of some weaving or knotting, to fraying interconnected lines is organic and reminds me of some of the work of Eva Hesse.

Similarly, the complexity of her lines draw the viewer into her 'internal' spaces, for they also seem to be about somethings you would see in a petrie dish or snorkeling underwater. There is life within the line and it engages and entwines the viewer to be a part of the wonder of them. In fact, one could become similarly mesmerized by her line as one does when looking at Willem DeKooning's "Excavation" painting for any length of time. One is only mercifully saved from becoming completely immersed with Hackenmiller's maze through the small breaths of open space - what's Not covered in linear ecstasy.

The scale of her work is intimate, and again, it draws the viewer to it like a magnet. One wants to look deeply into her spaces and pour over them like reading a good book.

I have to say that upon seeing Hackenmiller's website www.karlahackenmiller.com, I am more drawn to her color work,  where her sensitive layers are even more wondrous. I do not profess knowledge of her subject matter, but I enjoy the journey looking throughout her 'twists' and 'passing'.