Mid America Print Council's 2012 Outstanding Printmaker: James D. Butler

Congratulations are in order! I am privileged to write this article on behalf of my mentor, Illinois painter/printmaker James D. Butler, who is being honored with this year's 

Outstanding Printmaker award from the 

Mid America Print Council (MAPC) http://www.midamericaprintcouncil.org/

at their biennial conference, November 1-3, 2012. On  Thursday, November 1st, Butler will lecture about his work at the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall, held at Southeast Missouri State University, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. This is also an opportunity to see a collection of his works which are a featured event at the MAPC conference. Anyone who has ever studied under, taught with or collaborated with James Butler knows this has been a long time in coming, and it is certainly well-deserved.

To provide you with a little biographical information, James D. Butler was born in 1945 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He received his BS degree from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and his MFA degree from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He lives in Bloomington-Normal Illinois.(Yes, there's a town named Normal, and No, we don't like to talk about it).

Butler came to Illinois to head the printmaking program at Illinois State University, Normal, IL.  The program has  become an excellent training ground for printmakers, teachers and artists in general. Butler has taught with several esteemed printmaking colleagues; Harold Boyd, Raymond E. George, Richard Finch, Veda Rives and Sarah Smelser. He along with Richard Fich, Director of Normal Editions Workshop, have brought in a steady stream of visiting artists to make prints and meet with students. (It was one of the best experiences of that graduate program to work with professional artists.) 

Butler's teaching philosophy has always been to help the student find and nurture his/her strengths,  helping them to realize the aesthetic issues/technicalities of their discipline to keep them current in their field.The success of their program is realized with hundreds of fellow inked up printmakers working, teaching and running their own studios and printshops throughout the United States and Canada.

My first experience meeting James Butler was as a Visiting Artist at Miami University. He showed us his impressive group of prints (which came from an abstracted series like the 2nd image in this article) and as would have it printmakers, being the tech devotees we are,  he discussed with us at length his work ethic and technical innovations. It was a deciding factor inmy decision to attend ISU for graduate school, and I have been honored from the association. As a long time experimental artist, Butler has exhaustively explored the medium making his own litho crayons, and researched an infinite source of paper, paint and pastel in his other works.

Author Kristan H. McKinsey writes of Butler's landscape work as "...He uses landscape as a metaphor for the contemporary collective imagination of the nation, drawing ...attention to the state of our relationship with the environment. He has long explored the changing effects of light, weather, and the seasons on the landscape. Particularly interesting to him is the order Man imposes on the land, visible in the geometric patterns of farmland and urban settings."

The super-realistic double still-life below is one of Butler's best images and comes from his series of prints working from a select group of still life objects; inspired in part by the work of realist artist William Bailey, and his colleague Wayne Kimball. But his infinite attention to detail, the intimacy created when working on a stone with a subject and wanting to expand that experience to a large scale lead him to bigger challenges, so Butler transitioned to landscape in the late 1980s. He used as his subject his native Nebraska, the Mississippi River valley and the region surrounding central Illinois. 

Butler's artistic evolution develops a sort of commentary on the vitality and livelihood found in the fields and territory along the banks of the Mississippi River. Comparatively, his work is in keeping with some of the 19thc.'s French and English landscape artists; wherein observance is only but one facet of the artist's eye. He more than favorably compares with other Midwest landscape artists James Winn and Michael Dubina, whose grasp of the natural light and space found in the Midwest amply feeds the frenzy of grassy-plains-starved patrons in metropolitan areas like New York City.

Butler's meticulous engagement with interior still-life and the Midwest landscape has made him a recognized figure in American Art.  For over forty years his works have been reflections of the solitude and serenity of still-life, and the pastoral side of landscape imagery; both a fast-vanishing vignette with this country's past, as well as a statement on the majesty of the panoramic vista.  

My fellow inked up printmakers, here's to Big James D! 
Congratulations, and may he always find a stone waiting for an image to drawn upon it.

"For me, looking at art is a perceptual event..... I struggle constantly with what I see and how to represent it. Therefore, my working process involves considerable invention and re-invention...." --James D. Butler

Honors and Awards:
Outstanding Printmaker, Mid America Print Council Conference, Southeast Missouri State University, MO,  2012
Distinguished Professor of Art, Emeritus,School of Art,Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois

G.S.A. Commission, Oklahoma City Federal Courthouse, Art in Architecture Program, 1993 
Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowships, 1989 & 1985 
National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowships, 1985-86 & 1979-80
Illinois Arts Council Project Completion Grant, 1982-83 
Wood Trust Graduate Fellowship, 1969-70 

F.W. Vreeland Award, 1969 

Selected Exhibitions: 
American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters,  NY, Babcock Galleries,  NY, Frumkin and Struve Gallery,  IL, Gerald Peters Gallery, NM, Sherry French Gallery,  NY, State of Illinois Gallery,  IL, The University of Iowa Museum of Art,  IA 

Selected Public Collections: 
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH 
Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences, Peoria, IL 
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 
The New York Public Library, New York, NY 
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA 
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, NE
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Selected Publications: 
Magazines-  American Artist, , Art and Antiques, Art Forum, New Art Examiner
Books-
1996 -  Kinsey, Joni. "Plain Pictures: Images of the American Prairie". Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press . 
1994 - Harris, Neil. "Visions of America: Landscape as Metaphor in the Late Twentieth Century". New York: Harry N. Abrams . 
1989 - Arthur, John, "Spirit of Place - Contemporary Landscape Painting and The American Tradition". New York: Little, Brown and Company. 
1985 - Smith, Edward. "American Art Now". New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., . 

James D. Butler's  2012 MAPC Exhibition is in exhibit at the:
River Campus Art Gallery at Southeast Missouri State University

October 15- November 16

Artist’s Talk: Thursday, Nov. 1, 6-7 pm

The Gallery will showcase an accomplished collection of James D. Butler's work including paintings, drawings and a variety of printmaking techniques in tandem with the 2012 MAPC conference.  Butler has been an active artist and he works thematically, focusing on subjects that are part of his environment, from interior still life to landscape, quite often finding beauty in the ordinary.

Karen Kunc: The Cornucopian Printmaker

In the late 1970s, Karen Kunc came on the printmaking horizon like a blazing fireball, and she continues to blaze a trail in American printmaking. Since she earned her Masters degree from Ohio State University, eventually making her way back to teach in her native Nebraska at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Go Huskers!), she has helped assure a prominence to their already fine printmaking program.

What originally fascinated people with Kunc’s work, and continues to amaze them today,  is not only their enormity of scale, but the color, funk and complexity of her imagery visually connect her prints with other media – the upshot is Kunc’s works don’t necessarily look like prints. They cross over to something more painterly, and if someone weren’t informed about the methodology and look of prints, one could assume they were paintings. What is especially notable about this is that many artists have bridged into printmaking from their respective art fields and made wonderful prints like Helen Frankenthaler and Frank Stella. In this regard, Kunc helps advance the field and our colleagues on a par where prints are seen for the fantastic images they are, not being judged by elitist attitudes as a step-child to more 'serious' artistic endeavors.

Kunc’ painterly approach swings joyously to the other side of the art/print pendulum where her work breaks away from the flat, grained look of a traditional woodcut. There are references to landscape and what one would find living in Nebraska - the wide open ranges and amazing daily cumulus displays. But there is also an observance of Nature in its natural erosion and decay. Kunc' color selections don't necessarily call those natural observations to mind when we see her prints, but the formal elements are there. Still,  she is able to do something pretty special with a piece of wood and some carving tools. 

Additionally, she brings vibrant color to her work that is well above the register usually seen in this genre, and her ambitiously layered cornucopian feast makes us forget the labored journey she makes in creating these final images. Her production level is equally ambitious, including her eloquent handmade books and mixed media work. 

There is an organic quality to Kunc’s work, a joie de vivre. Some of her visual kinships are seen with painters like Georgia O’Keefe’s clouds, and the way Terry Winters shifts through his organic layers, but Kunc’ connections are more directly aligned to the late, great Elizabeth Murray. They share a fascination with color and surface, and if Kunc chose to work in 3D then their symbiotic sisterhood would be complete.

Here is an artist working at peak form, and it is certain students able to study and work with Kunc will only gain from the experience. Side note*I remember seeing Kunc years ago at one of the Drake Printmaking Symposium workshops in Des Moines. She came in and while she was getting prepped to work, she opened up this incredible, beautifully crafted case filled with custom made brayers from Europe. People’s jaws just dropped in awe. The tools’ craftsmanship was exquisite. While some say it’s the tools that make an artist work on a higher level, we all know that isn’t always true, but who among us wouldn’t love to have access to exceptional tools and paper with which to make our work? 

Kunc surely knows her craft and makes extraordinary prints. Our excitement is partly in anticipation of what she will next create, for the delight of seeing her work is like a savoring a fine dessert, or a bottle of Merlot. The work sings on different levels of satiation, and we are blessed to sample the abundance she shares with us. 

For more information about Kunc' work, go visit  www.karen-kunc.com/ and see an excerpt from her own statement about her work below.

“My work as an artist/printmaker addresses issues of the landscape and our natural surroundings as direct influences from my Nebraska heritage, my daily experiences and viewpoints in the landscape of the plains and from extensive travel, and as artistic interpretation and contemplation on larger issues of the eternal life struggle, of endurance and vulnerability, growth and destruction.

I am interested in the span of time it takes to wear away a canyon, build a mountain, the erosion forces that continually wash onto the plains, forming the earth, and, ultimately, shaping our world... from nature and science, spiritual and religious thought, art historical and modern icons, immigration narratives and native myths.”