April (Vollmer) in Winter

April Vollmer’s work is a breath of fresh air. Despite this blog post in winter, Vollmer’s work carries with it an aura of springtime and the smells associated with the earth being washed clean, and new blossoms and tree leaves springing to life after hibernating for the winter months. Vollmer’s work is visually light and airy, delicate and carefully balanced, and it carries a host of historical references which I will attempt to describe for all of you inked up fans.

Vollmer works out of New York, and she teaches printmaking workshops in the Japanese mokuhanga tradition. (Look it up. You all know by now that I do not discuss techniques on this blog) Her decision to take a beautiful object in nature, whether it be flowers, bees or birds, or a combination, is her point of origin. From there, she multiplies the image and often makes carefully balanced radial compositions. The centrally focused image lets the viewer move around and around in a frontal, flattened pattern. There is nothing to distract from the object, and one can wonder why that is, but the reasons seem obvious when we look at Vollmer’s points of historical reference from her travels to Serbia, Japan, Italy and India.

Her design motifs are easily associated with design motif for relief block fabric patterning from India, the simplicity of Nature found in Japanese paintings and prints, and stretching is a bit, the radial patterns of Islamic tile designs and weavings from the Near East. This combination of elements gives Vollmer a good and infinite source of subject and pairings, especially the nature-based form of perfection often found in Islamic work.

Vollmer has established a body of work that speaks about beauty, Nature and the perfection of mathematic equations. What could be more perfect? As we wait for Old Man Winter to blow throw the winter, we can look at these gems and look forward to what Spring will bring. Enjoy!

For more information about Vollmer's work or to contact her, see: april@aprilvollmer.com website: www.aprilvollmer.com www.japanesewoodblockprintworkshop.com

BIO
Vollmer teaches at the Lower East Side Printshop, the Japan Society, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Pyramid Atlantic, Frogman’s Print and Paper, Cabrillo College, the Women’s Studio Workshop and many other locations. Her work has been published in journals including Science, Printmaking Today, Contemporary Impressions and Art on Paper.
Education: CUNY Hunter College, B.A. 1983, M.F.A. 1983
Publication: Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop, Watson-Guptill, 2015
Public Collections:
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington DC
Keiko Kadota Collection, Tokyo, Japan
Spencer Museum (Univ. Kansas), Lawrence, KS
National Association of Women Artists, NYC
The Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center of the Portland Art Museum, OR
KIWA Kyoto International Woodcut Association, Japan

Nothing if Not Obsessed: The Prints of Frank Stella

"Making art is complicated because the categories are always changing. You just have to make your own art, and whatever categories it falls into will come later." - Frank Stella

The renowned American painter/printmaker, Frank Stella, was born in in 1936, in Malden, Massachusetts. After he graduated from  Princeton University in 1958 with a degree in History, Stella moved to New York City and eventually set up a studio in Manhattan. He was deeply influenced by the Abstract Expressionism movement and particularly liked the work of painters Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. He looked at the flat, single band of color of Barnet Newman’s enormous paintings and also responded to Jasper Johns’ ‘Target’ mixed media pieces.

Stella is recognized as one of the most influential artists of the of 20^th c. (60s and 70s) for his flat, geometric paintings about ‘nothing’. Yeah, right. Nothing but an obsession with detail, depth, color, texture, and life.   He set into motion a bold new art movement formulated upon a literal ‘what you see is what you see’ concept. He abandoned pictorial references and indulged in metallic paint and geometric-shaped canvases. The public didn’t know what to make of his work at first, but they had been over-saturated with the emotionalism attached with Abstract Expressionism. This new Minimalism movement wasn’t a walk in the park for the average person, but at least it was predictable in its geometric principles and regularity. For him, he preferred that the picture function as an object rather than it representing a person, place or thing.

Stella’s paintings were included in "Three Young Americans" at Oberlin College’s  Allen Memorial Art Museum, and in the Museum of Modern Art’s "Sixteen Americans”. Stella became one of famed art dealer Leo Castelli’s stable of artists and in 1960 he began to use metallic paint and pinstripe lines to make his work. Eventually, Stella worked with letters as a shaped canvas, and then expanded that idea to include shaped canvases in concentric circles laminated on 3D wooden constructions. His colors grew more varied, and the physical shift toward the tactile surface grew more verbose.

Similarly, Stella’s approach to printmaking was just as exploratory. He began working with Master Printer Ken Tyler at Gemini G.E.L. in the mid-60s and together they came up with the then inconceivable idea to blend and mix printmaking processes.  They incorporated lithography, offset lithography, silkscreen, etching and relief,  and as the critics say, the rest is history.





I recall my first exposure to Stella’s mixed media prints at an Art Expo in Chicago in the late 1980s. As is often the case when one walks through those endless corridors displaying a cattle-call of galleries, the eyes begin to glaze and visual overload begins to set in. I turned a corner and stopped dead in my tracks before one of Stella’s six foot tall prints. I remember the vivid green and densely layered paper. Man, it had so many layers of ink (52, in fact) the thing looked like you could stand it up in a corner like an old pair of unwashed jeans. It was just fantastic, stunning to look at, and it certainly looked like no print I’d ever seen before. I promptly asked the gallery rep what it cost – as if I could afford something like that as a student. The price while high wasn’t out of reach if I wanted to sell my car and hope there was enough left over to get myself on a train back to school. You get the gist. The bug had bitten me and the die was cast. If someone could do that with a print, well there were more that had to be made.

These works were so incredible for their technical virtuosity, one understand why Stella needed to go to a printer to help him make those things. Remember, this became the era of printer-artist collaborations, and prints were flooding the art markets. An artist could make a series of prints and sell them for a fraction of the cost of a painting or sculpture. Artists recognized in those other media went, sometime at the behest of their gallery dealer, to collaborate on a print project. Fortunately, it turned a tide and from this group of artists unfamiliar with the printmaking process, many of them came to love printmaking and continued making significant prints through the next 20 years. It reinvigorated the medium and the experimental print was born.

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Stella branched away from his Protractor series and created a large body of work  that was loosely inspired by  Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.  He began to call for a rejuvenated abstraction, by searching the depths of Caravaggio’s Baroque-era paintings for his inspiration. 

The result was that Stella’s paintings and prints became more wildly engaged in color and gestural strokes of color and etched surfaces. He librated traditional printmakers from the confines of a plate, stone or a silk screen. His images burst out from the paper and pulled the viewer into his compositions like a Newman or Pollock painting. Stella’s work, like Helen Frankenthaler’s, expanded the medium to do something new, and whether one likes his ‘subject matter’ or not, we must express our gratitude.

Finally, Stella’s art has been seen worldwide in several retrospectives in the United States, Europe, and Japan. He continues to live and work in New York where he also remains active working with the Artists Rights Society which is committed to protecting the rights of artists. 

Awards:

1965 - Solomon Guggenheim’s ‘The Shaped Canvas’, and their 1966’s ‘Systemic Painting’

1970 – A retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, making him the youngest artist ever to receive one.

1984 - Charles Eliot Norton lectures(6) at Harvard University

2009 - National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama



*Stella pictured at right working on one of his Moby Dick inspired prints.

James Lesesne Wells: African-American Printmaking Pioneer

As a part of our on-going series, History of Influential Printmakers, I came across the work of James Lesesne Wells and I think you will agree, his legacy in printmaking helped to promote the work of hundreds of young artists and he furthered the field of printmaking, especially for the masses of African-Americans whose opportunity to see and purchase original works of art were limited. 

James L. Wells was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1902, and raised in Florida. Wells’ artistic childhood was influenced by his parents’ religious beliefs, and his interest in teaching started as he helped his other run a daycare fro children. As a child, Wells used to stencil designs on the prayer meeting room walls of his father’s Baptist church and this lead him to study art. He attended the Florida Normal and Industrial Institute,  Lincoln University, and eventually earned both his Bachelors and Masters degrees at  the Teachers College of New York's Columbia University. He also studied one year at Stanley William Hayter's famed Atelier 17 workshop in New York.

Wells became a prolific printmaker and made his living for a time illustrating books and journals for the Crisis and Opportunity; two of the day's important black magazines.  Wells forged friendships with black scholars, including philosopher Alain Locke and historian Carter G. Woodson. These connections also led him to book illustration. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1929 and began teaching art at Howard University, where he would remain for thirty nine years. 

The Works Progress Administration used prints to make art available to the masses, this it was at this point Wells dedicated himself entirely to printmaking and developing his craft. Wells credited the impact of seeing a first ever exhibition of African sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art as changing the way he thought about art and how much it affected his style from that point on. Another major influence upon his work was a trip he took to West Africa after his retirement from Howard. the images he saw there emboldened his use of color and powerful images. He loved the raw power of German Expressionist woodcuts and Cubism's use of African sculpture and ceremonial masks toward abstraction. The themes of his work often revolved around  mythological, religious, social/political messages, violence, seduction, and civil rights.  

Wells' work addressed the history and experiences of African-Americans and the working class, and after Wells married Ophelia Davidson in 1933, he became active in anti-segregation protests in Washington D.C. because her brother,Eugene Davidson, was president of the local chapter of the NAACP. 

Wells enjoyed numerous exhibits in galleries and museums worldwide, including the Corcoran, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Baltimore art museums, the Society of American Graphics in New York, Fisk University, a 50 year retrospective at Howard University,The Washington Project for the Arts and the Harlem Studio Museum.

James Lesesne Wells left a mark on the art world that goes beyond his own work as a painter and printmaker. He was also one of the earliest American artists to concentrate his efforts on printmaking.

Awards

Harmon Foundation, Gold Medal, 1931

Smithsonian Institution, First prize, Religious Art Exhibition, 1958

Van Der Zee Award, Afro-American History and Cultural Museum, 1977 

Presidential citation by Jimmy Carter for lifelong contribution to American art, 1980

"James L. Wells Day" declared by Mayor Marion Barry, Washington DC, 1984

Living Legend Award, National Black Arts Festival, 1991

US and International Printmaking Residencies

Since listing the top Printmaking programs in the US and Canada, I wanted to share a listing of residencies, all of which include printmaking. For those of you out there seeking a place to go work outside of your own studio, the lists here should inspire you to venture to distant pastures and be creative in a new place.

US Printmaking Residencies
Anchor Graphics@ Columbia College Chicago, IL
Anderson Ranch Arts Centre, Snowmass Village, CO
Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT
Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minnesota, MN
Jerome Residency Fabric Workshop and Museum, philadelphia, PA, Apprentice training program
Kala Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Skohegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skohegan, ME
Sitka Centre, Otis, OR
Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY
Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY

International Printmaking Residencies
Chhap Baroda Printmaking Workshop, Gujarat, India
Proyecto Ace, Buenoa Aires, Argentina
Seacourt Pritn Workshop, Bangor Co, Northern Ireland
Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee, Belgium