Southern Graphics Print Council International Conference Hits Knoxville, Tennessee

Oh, my fellow inked up friends, the time has come, and we all can sniff the change in the air. Winter is waning and Spring is coming. That means the 2015 SGC International Conference is afoot. March 18-21. The chosen city for this year's extravaganza of ink, paper, prints and a 'bit' of after conference beverage consumption is Knoxville, TN. Knoxville is a fine town, indeed and host to several previous SGCI conferences. Its rich history in the US Civil War is well-noted, and it is the home of the University of Tennessee "Volunteers". It is also the seat of Appalachian culture, and is one of the gateways to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The 2015 SGC International Printmaking Conference will include numerous exhibitions, 18 panel sessions, 9 INKubator sessions, more than 15 exchange portfolios, a mentoring program, a diverse product-publishers-program fair, the 2015-2018 SGCI Member Traveling Exhibition, 22 technical demonstrations, a full day of open portfolio sessions, and some unique special projects.

Some special awards and exhibitions this year will include:

Lifetime Achievement Award: Red Grooms
Award Ceremony and Discussion with Bud Shark and Andy Saftel:
Wednesday March 18, 2015, Knoxville Convention Center, 6:30-7:30pm
Featured Exhibition:
“LIFT: Printmaking in the Third Dimension,” an exhibition of three-dimensional prints curated by Stephen Wicks.
Reception, Wednesday March 18, 2015, Knoxville Museum of Art, 7:30-9:30pm.

SGCI Printmaker Emerita: Ruth Weisberg
Award Ceremony and Keynote Presentation:
Thursday March 19, 2015, Knoxville Convention Center, Ballroom A-B, 5:15-6:15pm
Featured Exhibition:
“Time and Again,” UT Downtown Gallery, 106 South Gay Street,
Reception, Thursday March 19, 2015, 6:00-9:00pm.
Demonstration/Presentation with Master Printer Andy Rubin:
Saturday March 21, 2015, UTK, Art and Architecture Room 241, West, 12:00-1:30PM

For more information and registration for the conference, see the link here,http://web.utk.edu/~sphere/Pages/Home.html

Hope to see you all there!

African-American Art Pioneer/Printmaker: Dr. Margaret Burroughs

To celebrate the work of this fine artist, Benedictine University's Fr. Michael E. Komechak, O.S.B. Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition of prints and other works by Dr. Margaret Burroughs, March 9-April 25, 2015. www.ben.edu/artgallery

Margaret Taylor-Burroughs (1915–2010), was an African-American artist and writer and a co-founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History. Burroughs was born Victoria Margaret Taylor in St. Rose, Louisiana, and her family migrated to Chicago in 1922. She attended Englewood High School along with Gwendolyn Brooks, who in 1985-1986 served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (and later became United States Poet Laureate). Burroughs earned teacher's certificates from Chicago Teachers College in 1937, then went on to earn a B.S. in Education 1946, and her M.A. in Art Education in 1948, from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Taylor-Burroughs first married the artist Bernard Goss in 1939, but they divorced in 1947. In 1949 she married Charles Gordon Burroughs, and they had been married for forty-five years when he died in 1994.

Burroughs and her artist colleagues helped to establish the South Side Community Art Center, whose opening in 1941 was dedicated by the First Lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt. She is also credited with the founding of Chicago's Lake Meadows Art Fair in the early 1950s. At its inception there were very limited venues and galleries for African American Artists to exhibit and sell their artwork. Mrs. Burroughs also helped start the National Conference of African-American Artists, and she taught art and poetry to prison inmates, according to the Chicago Park District.

Margaret and her husband Charles co-founded what is now called the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago in 1961. Originally known as the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art, it made its debut in the living room of their house at 3806 S. Michigan Avenue in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Taylor-Burroughs served as its as Executive Director until 1984 and was then named Director Emeritus, remaining active in the museum's operations and fundraising efforts.

The museum moved to its current location in Washington Park in 1973, and today is the oldest museum of African-American culture in the United States. Both the current museum building and the Burroughs' former S. Michigan Avenue home are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Margaret Burroughs has created many of her own works of art as well. 'Art is communication,' she has said. 'I wish my art to speak not only for my people - but for all humanity.' Burroughs was impacted by the achievements of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. Du Bois. In many of Burroughs' pieces, she depicts people with half black and half white faces. In "The Faces of My People" Burroughs carved five people staring at the viewer. While Burroughs is attempting to blend together the black and white communities, she also shows the barriers that stop the communities from uniting. "Burroughs sees her art as a catalyst for bringing people together….”

The contribution of Burroughs to the artists on south side of Chicago and beyond was felt when eulogies at her passing were published….
Cheryl Blackwell Bryson, chairwoman of the DuSable Museum's board of trustees, said: "Not everybody can build an institution that becomes a road map for other ethnic groups around the world to emulate, an institution that is designed to impact lives."
Mayor Richard Daley said: "Through her artistic talent and wide breadth of knowledge, she gave us a cultural gem, the DuSable Museum of African American History. But she herself was a cultural institution."



President Barack Obama praised Mrs. Burroughs' generosity and commitment, saying "Michelle and I are saddened by the passing of Dr. Margaret Burroughs, who was widely admired for her contributions to American culture as an esteemed artist, historian, educator and mentor," Obama said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to Dr. Burroughs' family and loved ones. Her legacy will live on in Chicago and around the world."

Teaching:
DuSable High School, 1946 - 1969
Kennedy-King College, 1969 - 1979
Elmhurst College, 1968

Collections/Awards/Legacy:
Koehnline Museum of Art at Oakton Community College
1975 - President's Humanitarian Award
1985 - Chicago Park District Commissioner by Harold Washington, a position she held until shortly before her death in 2010.
1989 - Chicago Women's Hall of Fame
President Jimmy Carter appointed her a member of the National Commission on African-American History and Culture.
1989 - Paul Robeson Award
1994 – Proclamation for “Dr. Margaret Burroughs’ Day”, by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley
2010 - The Legends and Legacy Award, the Art Institute of Chicago

In a World of His Own: The Prints of Peter Milton

There are not many printmakers in the United States who make it on their own - that is, who earn their livelihood solely by making prints... At age thirty-nine Peter Milton made the decision to devote his entire energies to printmaking. Today he is considered the most successful of contemporary artists.

Kneeland McNulty

Peter Winslow Milton. American, b. 1930-
Milton's mesmerizing world of invented reality and mind-bending perspectives present a richly detailed view of society that is at once contemporary as much as it is a world of the past. Leisurely times spent playing pool in the parlour, and sitting in the sun room of some palatial salon sipping tea while watching fish swim above one's heads as though we are in an aquarium are only some of Milton's twisted images of reality.

The period Milton references harkens back to the Victorian and Industrial Age. We see old automobiles, and large, airy interiors of grand homes, with children playing in enormous expanses alongside of a painter at his easel; with his faithful dog curled up at his feet. The complexity of Milton's fantastical images, combines several types of spaces, interiors and overlapping spaces into one gigantic place of one's dreams. The artistic references present in Milton's work also intrigue us and make us feel as though we are a part of Milton's dreamscapes.

Stages for the ballet behind private viewing boxes for the opera, intermittent with genteel folk and the commoner are make us feel as though we seeing a performance onstage and off. The gathering of people for the ballet have a similar feel as the lively patrons of a Toulouse Lautrec cabaret.

Milton’s imagery frequently draws on elements from the late 19th and early 20th century English and French literary world. He manages not only capture the mood of another era but also mid-century cinema. Bergman and Fellini are among his major artistic influences.

The artist's compositional similarities to a Caillebotte painting, or one of Milton's interior/exteriors remind one of the perception-twisted environs of an M.C. Escher print, or the flip of being within and outside a structure like we see in his lonely staircases with gaslight parks and the glassed-in dome of a train station or a conservatory. These are complex pictures and we revel in the artist's pain-staking details.

Milton has received numerous awards for his work, and has a published book titled Peter Milton: Complete Prints 1960-1996. This is a person worthy of the print medium and pushes it with every technical and cultural/artistic influence he can muster. Let us salute one of our modern masters and pray let us look forward to more from his unique world.....

Education
1954 B.F.A. Yale University, New Haven, CT
1961 M.F.A Yale University, New Haven, CT
Work In Public Collections
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY
Ashville Museum of Art, NC
Baltimore Museum of ART, MD
Banco de la Republica, Bogotá, Columbia
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France
Boston Public Library, MA
British Museum, London, England
Brooklyn Museum, NY
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
Cincinnati Art Museum, OH
Cleveland Museum of Art, OH
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Detroit Institute of Arts, MI
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, CA
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
George Washington University, Washington, DC
Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Columbia
Museo de Arte Moderno "La Tertulla", Cali, Columbia
Museum of American Art, Washington DC
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
New Britain Museum of American Art, CT
New Jersey State Museum, Trenton
New York Times
Newark Public Library, NJ
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
Portland Art Museum, OR
Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, RI
Rutgers University, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick
Seattle Art Museum, WA
Society of American Graphic Artists, Inc., NYC
Stanford University, Cantor Center for Visual Arts, MN
Tate Gallery, London, England
Yale University, New Haven, CT

The Pride of South Side Chicago: Charles W. White

Charles W. White (1918-1979) is considered one of America's most recognized African-American Social Realist artists. White’s works is largely devoted to the portrayal of Black America.

Two personal experiences greatly affected White, which later came to influence his artwork. First, he was physically assaulted for walking into a restaurant in New Orleans. Second, in Virginia, White was forced, at gunpoint, to the rear of a streetcar. Additionally, he developed a deeply-rooted anger against injustice after learning that several of his relatives had been lynched.

White’s artwork’s subjects include scenes depicting US African-American history, their socio-economic struggles, human relationships, and portraits. His artwork possessed great draftsmanship, sensitivity and affirmed the humanity of African- American culture.

“I use Negro subject matter because Negroes are closest to me. But I am trying to express a universal feeling through them, a meaning for all men… -- I’ve had my work in museum’s where I wasn’t allowed to see it. But what I pour into my work is the challenge of how beautiful life can be.”

Born in 1918 to Ethel Gary and Charles White Sr., on the South Side of Chicago, White was the son of an African-American domestic worker and a railroad dining car waiter of Indigenous American descent. Art became a refuge from his unhappy home and their extreme poverty, and from the violence often found in his neighborhood. As a child, while his mother was working, White would often spend hours alone at the public library or the Art Institute of Chicago.

By the age of seven, he showed an interest in art, making objects from found materials and using paint set that his mother bought him for his birthday. At fourteen he joined the Arts and Crafts Guild and he worked as a sign letterer for the Regal Theater. White’s drawings won a competition, so he attended a weekend “honors” class at the Art Institute. Artists Charles Sebree and Margaret Burroughs also attended this class. When he was 16-years-old, he met and hung out with many artists like poet Gwendolyn Brooks, author Margaret Walker, and Richard Wright.

By the age of twenty he graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1938 and then he began working on projects through the Works Progress Administration.

White moved to New York in 1942, studying for a short period of time at the Art Students League, and met many social activists, writers, musicians, and intellectuals. He met and married sculptor Elizabeth Catlett, who then taught in New Orleans at Dillard University. He had won two scholarships, one to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the other to the Frederic Mizes Academy of Arts, both of which were withdrawn when it was discovered White was African-American.

White and Catlett left New York to teach at Hampton Institute in Virginia until White was drafted in 1943. Soon after, he contracted tuberculosis while serving in the Army and spent three years in a Veterans hospital in Beacon, New York. Forced to limit his exposure to oil paints, he began to focus more on drawing, worked on subjects of social injustice, as well as incidents of African- American history.

He then returned to New York City and had a one man show at the American Contemporary Artists (ACA) Gallery in September 1947. That fall, White and Catlett went to Mexico at the invitation of muralist David Siqueiros. They studied and worked for one year at Mexico’s graphic workshop Taller de Grafica Popular before his health deteriorated again and he was forced to return to New York where he had lung surgery. His marriage to Catlett ended soon after his travels to Mexico.

In 1950, White married Frances Barrett. They chose to move to California for the weather, to help improve White’s ailing health. During this period, White’s works were being discovered by the Black Consciousness movement of the 1960s and several black colleges sought to exhibit his work.

White died on October 3, 1979, in California, of congestive heart failure.

In a monograph written by Andrea Barnwell, Director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, she says "Charles White's art, easily identifiable by its bold figures, left an indelible imprint. This romantic revolutionary believed wholeheartedly in the art, mission, compassion, and dreams of all black people."

Selected Exhibitions and Other Accolades:
the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum, Smithsonian Institution, National Academy of Design, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.

Recipient of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation study grant.
Elected to the National Academy of Design in 1972.
Chair of the Drawing Department at Otis College of Art and Design.
Taught at the Otis Art Institute from 1965 - 1979.
Received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Columbia College Chicago.
Featured LACMA's first exhibition devoted exclusively to African-American Artists.
Hampton University. mural: The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy

Celebrate St. Valentine's Day All Inked Up!

Ah, my inked up comrades, it's the day people everywhere share some food, drink, flowers, chocolate, and a little time with a special inked up someone(preferably, but not required.) It is also the day a long-standing tradition of making, printing, sending and receiving little pieces of paper covered with hearts, cupids and affectionate phrases makes their way into our mailboxes, coat pockets, and the inbox of our computers.

Today, I am sharing a couple images with you to celebrate the poor St. Valentine, who's day wasn't so romantic or much fun. His death in the year 270 was less than desirable, but from it has sprung countless expressions of romance and desire. The images below show how much printmaking has had a hand in this day of love, but then we understand that, being that we love what we do and what we make. Enjoy, my friends...

Angela Cavalieri's Printed Narrative Structures

Ambitious, bold and mesmerizing. Those are some aptly coined phrases one would hear when seeing the work of Angela Cavalieri and her mammoth-sized prints and book works.You know, one could work smaller, as is often the case when making prints, but Cavaleieri is a risk-taker and aggressively hits the floor running with her work.

The blend of scale, lettering and architecturally referenced shapes build a code she works with to create narrative structure through the printed letters and words. The images tossle between varying scales and the text is large and clunky, pleasingly so. The works are a process of evolution and feel as though Cavalieri is drawing them out as she goes.

From Cavalieri's website her biography shares this with us..."Sources include poetry, religious epitaphs and inscriptions on public buildings.Fragments of experience and narrative find their form in the enlarged, broken and repaired text.Seeing the text as an image, she re-writes that part of history by re-working and integrating the text into forms that reinforce its physical and material presence. The narrative is constantly changing and rediscovering itself and new narratives appear."

Yes, we can get that from seeing her work. Anyone can build their own narrative based upon their own experience. The language doesn't impact me as much as the scale of the work and that she often forms architectural units from the shapes she manipulates. This is fine, all good. The actual type and place of the architecture is her own experience, but they are generic enough that we understand what they are.

The other forms that are created seem collaged almost organic. They are imbued with sound or discernment of translation as one hears a language and has to run it through some sort f internal machine to decipher their meaning or translate them to our native tongue. Cavalieri talks about Italian being her fist tongue, and so we sense that eternal need to translate whatever we hear to our base language.

Cavalieri uses the history of printmaking, its communication base to make her images. The lettering and the making of colossal 3D books is a lot of work, and again, the pages often are made into shapes/colonnades of hallways filled with words, cavernous spaces filled with language and sounds we can't totally clearly make out. They are about travels to foreign places and passing through large spaces. The words pass around us and through our senses. We hear them come from all directions and have to choose our pathway through them carefully.

Cavalieri approaches the printmaking process as a tool to make images more often seen from painters. She shares her journeys and travels and responses to poetry with a grand, expressive conviction. We can be impressed with the scale, but it is the content that matters here, and Cavalieri carries her heart and passions on her sleeve and unabashedly puts them out there for all to see. Kudos to her for hanging her emotions and personal feelings out on the line for us to see and hear. Whether you care about her personal journey is not the point. In a world filled with so much information, sometimes we have to make a big statement or say it loud enough for others to take notice. Cavalieri is doing that, and we will continue to take notice and she continues to make her work.

Born in Melbourne, 1962.
Education: 1981-83 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Victorian College of the Arts
Solo Exhibitions:
2011 Parole Viaggante: Angela Cavalieri’s Travelling Words,
La Trobe University Museum of Art and Maroondah Art Gallery, Melbourne
2011 Un’altra Storia, IMPACT7, Monash University, Melbourne
2011 Chiacchierone, Australian Galleries, Smith Street, Melbourne
2008 Passaggi Scritti, Gallery 101, Melbourne

Group Exhibitions:
2011 Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion in the World Project, Venice, Italy
2011 Manly Library Artist Book Award, Sydney
2011 Fine Impressions, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
2011 The Rick Amor Print Prize, Montsalvat, Melbourne
2011 Weaving Art and Change, Forty five downstairs, Melbourne
2011 Reframed, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne
2011 Burnie Print Prize, Burnie Regional Gallery, TAS
2010 Artists’ Prints made with Integrity 1, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
2010 The 36th Alice Prize, Araluen Centre, Alice Springs, NT
2009 The Counihan Connection: Noel Counihan and Contemporary Artists, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne
2009 Hutchins Art Prize, Long Gallery, Hobart, TAS.
2009 Geelong Print Prize, Geelong Art Gallery, VIC.
2009 Works on Paper Art Prize, Banyule City Council, VIC
2009 Silk Cut Acquisitive Award, Glen Eira Arts Complex, Melbourne, VIC
2009 Surveying the Field, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne, VIC
2009 Books….beyond words, Highly Commended, East Gippsland Art Gallery, VIC
2009 Book Crossing – from the Deakin University Artists’ Book Collection, Geelong Art Gallery, VIC
2009 DLAP: City of Darebin La Trobe University Acquisitive Art Prize. VIC
2009 Transitions: European Island and Regional Cultures, La Trobe University Art Gallery, VIC
2009 CPM Print Acquisition Awards, Highly Commended Tweed River Regional Art Gallery, NSW

Residencies:
Australia Council Overseas Development Grant for Barcelona
Piramidon Centre for Contemporary Art, Barcelona
Edith Cowan University
Australia Council Residency at The British School, Rome

Collections:
Australian National Gallery, Canberra
Art Gallery of New South Wales Library Collection, Sydney
Bailleu Library - Melbourne University
Banyule City Art Collection, Victoria
Deakin University Art Gallery, Victoria
Fryer Library - University of Queensland
Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria
Gold Coast City Gallery, Queensland
Mackay Regional Gallery, Queensland
Manly Library, Sydney
Maroondah Art Gallery, Victoria
Monash University Library, Victoria
Moreland City Council Art Collection
Musees D’art et d’histoire, Geneva
National Gallery of Victoria
Piramidon Contemporary Art Collection Barcelona, Spain
Silk Cut Foundation, Canberra
State Library of New South Wales
State Library of Victoria
Sutherland Shire Council, New South Wales
Whitehorse City Council, Victoria

Dox Thrash's Visceral Portraits of African-Americans

Greetings to all my inked up comrades, and welcome to 2015! This year promises to bring you a lot of new articles on artists, exhibitions and books on our favorite subject - prints! I enjoy hearing your comments on these articles and welcome hearing from you about any new printshops, upcoming workshops, and retreats.

To start the year off, we will look at the work of Dox Thrash (1893-1965), an African-American printmaker originally from Griffin, Georgia, who migrated north as part of the Great Migration. He settled in Chicago and then Philadelphia, producing work on the subject of African-American life. His work is largely recognized as portraying a positive view of African-Americans,promoting the idea of strong characters and bold portraits.

Thrash left home at the age of fifteen in search of work up north as part of the Great Migration (African American). He initially got work with a circus, then he moved to Chicago, and got a job as an elevator operator. He studied art, first through correspondence courses and then at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he completed his studies in 1923. During WWI, Thrash joined the army and fought in the Buffalo Soldiers brigade, where he suffered shell shock, but did not suffer any permanent after affects. In 1925, he settled in Philadelphia and took a job working as a janitor. Once in Philadelphia, he decided to study printmaking at the Graphic Sketch Club, now the Fleisher Art Memorial. In his free time, he continued his art and gained recognition for a poster he designed for the 2nd Annual National Negro Music Festival. He also joined the Tra Club of Philadelphia. He was an important member of Philadelphia’s Fine Print Workshop, a division of the Work Projects Administration’s Federal Arts Project, from 1937-1942, and his career flourished with this support.

Thrash mentored many young African American artists. Forty years after his death, Thrash was posthumously honored in Philadelphia with an exhibition called, “Dox Thrash: An African-American Master Printmaker Rediscovered”.

Thrash' view of the south included old cabins with a nostalgic view of his youth. Families living, working and playing around the homestead. laundry onthe line, the family bound together out of survival and out of necessity to survive as a unit. Some of his work depicted the horrific lynching common in the south prior to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, but some also present a solemn, even romantic view of man communing with his environment. These prints have the feel of 19th century French paintings and the works of Corot.

Thrash focused on subjects from the city, memories of his early life in rural Georgia, and nudes and portraits. Narrative, sentiment and African-American experience are the key elements of Thrash’s work; his innovative techniques are important only in so far as they dramatically express his subjects.There are several prints showing scenes of rustic cabins in idyllic landscapes. One print, titled "Sunday Morning", shows a woman dressed up and striding along in profile. (The subject of this print has been theorized as being Thrash’s mother walking to church.)

It was the strength of his African Americans portraits that Thrash emphasized over and over, reflecting his African American audience back at themselves, hinting at the psychological expense of attempting to conform to pre-existing white norms while presenting a new vision of the group as strong, positive role models overcoming their past and adversities.

Thrash's style is soft, dark and evokes passion. His line is classically structural and his tones softly Romantic, but the depth of his passion for his fellow man is evident in every rough, coarsely drawn line. His body of prints, which number over 100, are worth a look and can be seen in Ittmann's book which is listed below.

Thrash working in his studio.

Ittmann, John. Dox Thrash: An African-American Master Printmaker Rediscovered. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art; Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2001.