Julia Goos Pence's Prints of a Re-consructed History

Julia Goos Pence is an artist who lives and works in Oregon. She one of the artists participating in Monoprint 2013  at University of Stevens Point (May 31-June 6). I support of this project, I am reviewing some of the artists in this year's event.

After spending time with her work, http://www.juliagoospence.com/, one perceives her search for history; for ancient structures, cultures and places where people have come to a place to settle, put down roots, only to be displaced or abandon their homes. There isn't a sense of destruction in the sense  that Adrian Barron's work portrays where homes are being burned down. Pence gives us diagrammatic structures that seem to be projections or layouts of what will be a settlement. Her drawing sensibility is securely set in linear perspective.  But then she throws in a hearth fireplace without the home, a symbol of the core of the family activities. Pencil thin sticks make up fragile fort-like structures, or a clustering of trees as some form of natural defense against the danger of the wilds. Still other prints reveal what appear to be temple-like structures found in ancient Greece or Stonehenge.

In this series, Pence's colors are muted and faded, like memories of places one's seen but they're not tangible enough to hold long in our consciousness. There are soft flat bands of color that permeate the linear space and they create small barriers to navigate the compositions. Their seemingly random placements aren't, for they build patterns often seen in quilt-making. Again, the suggestion of a home-making activity reserved historically for women, but veiled under these circumstances. 

More contemporarily, some of Pence's imagery relates to the other-worldliness of Mies van der Rohe's early skyscraper diagrams from the 1920s, but her spatial depth and emptiness is more keenly attuned with the mammoth drawings of Anselm Kiefer and the shipyard prints of Robert Stackhouse. Her subtle reference to feminist artist Joyce Kozloff may not be conscious, but  it is implied.

This curious blend of seeking out one's destiny and planting roots in a vast emptiness, coupled with the intent to provide safety and secutiy through the patchwork quilt designs, shows Pence's an understanding of the nature of man - to settle down, have a family, survive the elements. It's a story ingrained in every culture since the dawn of mankind. Her work ably continues that legacy.

Head to Wisconsin for MONOPRINT 2013 !

In the name of enterprise( I don't mean the Star Trek kind) and resourcefulness, we printmakers have to be pretty adept at finding ways to market ourselves and get our work out to the masses. In any number of art fairs found in this country, one can find an excellent printmaker selling their prints for pennies on the dollar, or selling their work in a cafe. A university's annual Christmas print sale is a good option for finding some great work and supporting local art students, because honestly, if we don't sell them there we'll end up giving away prints for Christmas presents because, well, people(family) need our work to grace their bathrooms and closets, and we don't have the inclination nor means to go Christmas shopping at Neiman Marcus(Needless Mark-ups). Sorry, I digress......

I want to discuss an idea that involves community support for local printmaking programs (in this case at a university, but it would work equally well for an independent print shop or studio). University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point is hosting its 3rd biennial Monoprint symposium May 31- June 6 whereby a dozen artists are invited to come make as many prints as they can within a week's time. The purpose of making these prints is that at the end of the week, the artists donate a couple of prints to an art exhibit/art auction. At the auction, people from the community come in to bid on the pieces, and the proceeds from the auction go back to the university's printmaking department to help support the  program with supplies, maintain and improve facilities and bring in guest artists. 

For those uninitiated to our inked up profession, the monoprint process is a singular,  one of a kind print versus the tried and true nature of the medium where we make multiples (editions) of the same image. The artists invited to this year's Monoprint 2013 are a diverse lot, and well equipped to making alternative prints. They are as follows:

          John Armstrong (Phoenix, AZ)

·         Bob Erickson (Amherst Junction, WI)

·         Julia Goos Pence (Portland, OR)

·         Caren Heft (Stevens Point, WI)

·         JinMan Jo (Plover, WI)

·         Joshua Kolbow (West Bend, WI)

·         Kristen Martincic (Columbia, MO)

·         Dennis Nechvatal (Madison, WI)

·         Deb Oden (Savannah, GA)

·         John Schulz (Boston, MA)

·         Eung-Won Suh (Seoul, South Korea)

·         Cerese Vaden (Tempe, AZ)

·         Danielle Wyckoff (Grand Rapids, MI)

The entrepreneurship of such an idea helps the university or printshop establish ties with the community, and it establishes a little financial freedom from budget cuts, which has crippled university art programs in recent years. This isn't a new idea, but it's one that works.  Robert Erickson (Big Bob) heads the printmaking program at Stevens Point and if any of you are in the area, then pop in and see what's happening. I guarantee there will be some kick-axx prints happening and it will be worth the effort to go to the art auction (Thursday, June 6, 6:30-8:30p, at the Edna Carlsten Gallery) to support a fine printmaking program such as found at Stevens Point. 

For more information, email rerickso@uwsp.edu or go to this link for the symposium,  http://www.uwsp.edu/art-design/monoprint

John Armstrong Wields His Alternative Path through Printmaking

John Armstrong is a master printer and printmaker(there is a difference, folks)who hails originally from Laurel MT, but has resided in Phoenix, AZ for many years.  He will be one of a dozen invited artists from across the United States to participate in MONOPRINT 2013, which is being held May 31-June 6, at University of Wisconsin at Steven's Point. http://www.uwsp.edu/art-design/monoprint/I first met Armstrong at the first MONOPRINT symposium in 2009. Over the course of a week, I watched as Armstrong banded together some mysterious materials, mixed some of them together, waved his magic printing hands over the plates and voila!, there were prints all over the place. Honestly, they sprung up like rabbits jumping out of a magician's hat. With a little bit more cutting and collage, he'd amassed quite a striking group of works. 

The thing about the symposium, is that people from the community are welcome to come into the shop and see artists at work. During the week when I worked alongside Armstrong, he was quite the teacher, inviting people to try some of the techniques he was doing and extended the collaborative part of printmaking to include their suggestions and collages with his work. It made the experience more enjoyable for them and de-mystified the printing process. Armstrong's a generous instructor and gives his time and energy wholeheartedly. His inventiveness in the printmaking field is endless and the work is pretty incredible, too.

Armstrong was raised in a large family in Montana, and since receiving his MFA from University of Montana, he's been settled in the southwest in Phoenix for some time. Throughout his varied career, Armstrong's always brought integrity, creativity and energy to his projects, whether it be in museum administration, or in art education, exhibit design, or curating a private/corporate art colleciton. He and his wife, Joan Prior, operate Armstrong-Prior, Inc, a multi-facted business in the arts. Through it, he has worked as a master printer with several internationally acclaimed artists, including Rudy Autio, Jun Kaneko, Matin Mull and Don Reitz.

As for Armstrong's imagrey, I am enamored with it to the extent he breaks from traditional printing techniques, and doesn't fuss about cutting and collaging the shapes which have familial ties with the work of artists Arshile Gorky and Willem DeKooning. His lines ebb and flow throughout the compositions, and they embrace the edges of his shapes, which are sometimes bold with flat color, or transclucent letting co-exist underlayers of line and shape. I head a video once where Armstrong was talkng about his work, and the jazz music playing in the background was a perfect match for the way these images sing. His prints can be incredibly spatial or tightly composed, but in any case one is pleasantly surprised at the large and small aspects of his images. I was not able to get more images of Armstrong's work to better illustrate my point, but you can find more of his work at johnarmstrongartist.wix.com/art where one can also find examples of his paintings, sculpture and prints. Overall, one can see his sensitivity for color and line and Nature. If you are able to be in the Stevens Point area next week, drop by and see Armstrong and the rest of the artists working at the MONOPRINT 2013 symposium. You might even get to work with Armstrong on one of his pieces......

Armstrong now works in his own studio, often collaborating with other artists. Here is a video where Armstrong talks about his work. http://vimeo.com/55539874

Contact: john@armstrong-prior.com Tel: 602-253-5784