Selected Catalog Entries - "At the Edge"

Richard Noyce
Powys, Wales
Entrance
Archival Indigo Digital Print on 275gsm Tintoretto paper
2006

Richard Noyce's book, "Printmaking at the Edge" collects the images and ideas behind 45 artists from 16 countries and explores the innovative techniques printmakers are using today. The topics covered range from the challenges of new technology and materials (for example, the latest high-tech plates and specialty papers and inks) to the persistence of traditional techniques and the new directions they are taking (for example, digital techniques being used with silkscreen and wood engraving). All scales and stages of printmaking are dealt with. As the book became available in April 2006, Scott Betz began contacting the artists about a possible shared project that would help establish a greater sense of community between them. One of the most practical solutions, given the distance between participants would be to produce an edition for a print exchange portfolio, but how can a boxed set of prints qualify as "at the Edge"?

"Further" became the portfolio theme and title and the real challenge sent to the participants was to take their work further towards the "edge(s)" as Noyce writes in his book.
The prints have already been exhibited at several locations, including Salem College (Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.), Grafikos Galerija (Kaunas, Lithuania), and Galleria Harmonia (Jyväskylä, Finland). Additionally, several of the artists will participate in the Southern Graphics Council Annual Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. in March 2007.
It is fitting that Noyce's own contribution to the portfolio depicts an entryway - suggesting that the portfolio project and the included prints are merely a starting point for increased artistic adventure and collaboration among a group of contemporary printmakers. SD

Scott Betz
Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Further…Closer
Double-sided Digital print to be cut out and assembled. DVD source image.
The installation includes the front version of the print, plus the recto (reverse) as assembled. Additionally, the DVD feed incorporates images from Google Earth™ showing the home locations of all the artists featured in the portfolio.

As the organizer of both the portfolio project and its inaugural exhibition (Salem College, Winston-Salem, North Carolina), Scott Betz had the vantage point from which he could shape his contribution to the portfolio to both reflect and push the theme of going "further" with printmaking. This he does quite successfully with his multifaceted approach to both print and installation.

Betz's work consisted of a double sided print which can, if its owner desires, be cut and assembled to make a multihedral sphere representative of the globe, with particular focus on the locations where each of the portfolio artists live. Should the owner wish to keep their print in two-dimensional form, the reverse of the print shows what the globe would look like if assembled. For the Salem College exhibition, Betz also included a DVD loop created using imagery from GoogleEarth™, flying around the globe and zooming in on each artists' home or studio locale.

Titled Further…Closer, Betz's work plays on the ways in which this project simultaneously collects and redistributes images from around the world. Brought "closer" in portfolio and exhibit contexts, the prints are then sent "further" as the move from gallery to gallery and end up in widely scattered collections. Beyond the geographic metaphors, however, the title also reflects the desire of Betz and the artists represented in the portfolio to push the boundaries of printmaking "further," while also creating a closer community of individuals exploring the potential of contemporary printmaking techniques. SD

Dorothy Simpson Krause
Marshfield, MA, USA
Technology
A scanned collage of plaster, metal and tar, a circuit board, an architectural drawing and a medical illlustration were combined in Adobe Photoshop and printed with the HP 9180, 13" x 19" full bleed on Hahnemuhle smooth fine art paper.
2006
www.dotkrause.com

Dot Krause holds a respected place in the history of American printmaking as one of the first print artists to embrace the possibilities inherent in digital technology. It is fitting, therefore, that her contribution to this portfolio should bear the title Technology and link together several motifs that have surfaced at various points in her work and career. The use of collage is a hallmark of Krause's work and serves her well in its ability to simultaneously reveal and obscure multiple layers in a work of art. In this image, the dense bottom portion of the print includes images of a computer circuit board atop a dark background. This in turns gives way to red swath across the middle tier of the image and subsequently to a delicate anatomical drawing of the human nervous system and brain, highlighted against a pale background at the top.

What is the role that technology is meant to play in this image and, perhaps, in our world as a whole? Does the circuit board serve as the base from which human and structure (represented by an architectural drawing lying grid-like across two-thirds of the print) emerge? If so, should that base be seen as generative? Or is it problematic - pushed to the depths while human cognition rises into the light? I doubt that Krause's print is meant to answer those questions - rather, in keeping with the rest of her work, it encourages us to keep asking them. SD