Blind Mickey’s Blues, 1997
William T. Wiley
In Blind Mickey’s Blues Wiley adopts the urban myth of a cryogenically preserved Walt Disney as a metaphor for technology employed for selfish ends. Wiley superimposed the humorous image of a blues-singing Mickey Mouse over a cryogenic tank inscribed with his song, all of which floats like a satellite above a map of the world, implying that the sometimes silly choices we make can indeed have global meaning.
Sea Serpent, 2008
Akio Takamori
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group, is a monumental marble sculpture now in the Vatican Museums, Rome. The statue is attributed by the Roman author Pliny the Elder to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus. It shows the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being strangled by sea serpents. (Wikipedia)
“The Laocoön Group and also El Greco’s painting Laocoön has been a favorite fo mine for a long time. The image reminds me of the meaning of fatherhood and makes me think of my grandfather, father, my son and myself. Especially, I think of a young man who is in his coming of age and struggling to recognize the meaning of the manhood that will be ahead of him.
The Sea Serpent print came from one of the sculptures from the exhibition called “Children” in 2007. In this exhibition, I installed clay sculptures and enlarged their images, placing them face to face. The young man figure used in Sea Serpent is one of the sculpture from this exhibition.
I have been interested in defining information that come from two-dimensional and three-dimensional images. An enlarged detail digital image of a clay sculpture reveals materialness of the clay perhaps more than itself. I am interested in the process and transformations of the images that I create. It involves material as clay, firing process, surface drawings, transformation with digital photograph and then printmaking process. The human figures are center of my image making. I am interested in creating human conditions.”
– Akio Takamori –
Tribe/Community, 1996
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
Nature/Medicine, 1996
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
Wisdom/Knowledge, 1996
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
Humor, 1996
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith
Pictured with found and drawn images are the four survival skills Jaune learned in the Flathead Nation: Nature/Medicine, Tribe/Community, Wisdom/Knowledge and Humor. No need to double-define humor. Images include references to cowboys and Indians, to science and industry and to art, all placed about a central figure, whether a Matisse-like dancing figure (nature), rabbit (tribe), skeletons (wisdom) or kachina dolls (humor).
Assyrian Lion, 2004
Luis Jimènez
Assyrion Lion is a powerfully drawn image referencing the historic changes happening in the Middle East and the loss of ancient, cultural icons. With dramatic effect, this piece uses the archetypal Babylonian image of a female lion (here severely wounded) and a flame engulfed, falling ziggurat (the tower of Babel?) to make the point.
“These lithographs are part of an ongoing exploration of structure in nature, and the overlay of systems we have developed for observing, mapping and defining natural forms and phenomena.
They began as I experienced the rapidly changing daylight in late summer in a far Northern latitude. The retreating light and advancing shadows moved quickly enough to feel the daylight hours shrinking.
When I returned to the desert, I started series of night walks. The small area illuminated by the beam of a flashlight and the shadows in the surrounding darkness brought back the feeling of walking in a place where the light was rapidly disappearing as the landscape headed toward winter.”
– Susan Davidoff –
“Minidoka Snapshots is a suite of miniprints that attempts to capture some essential visual features of the interior camp environment. Tar paper barracks, barren landscapes, barbed wire and guard towers are the principal components that make up the immutable view.”
– Roger Shimomura –
Kansas Samurai, 2004
Roger Shimomura
“The move to Kansas 35 years ago underscored my ethnic and cultural difference from the local populace and soon inspired a new direction in my artwork. The images in Kansas Samurai are meant to metaphorically represent that sense of rejection that can be experienced by those who are not members of the majority culture.”
– Roger Shimomura –
Kansas Samurai was started in 2002 and finished in 2004, the year Shimomura retired from teaching at the University of Kansas. Incorporated in the background is the actual grain pattern of a woodblock, referencing the look of a Japanese woodcut. The line drawn figures from classical American cartoon culture all have their backs turned to the central samurai figure. The image is a reflection on the changes that evolved in Roger’s work after moving from Seattle to the Midwest in 1970.
Screen Saver, 2015
Andrzej Zielinski
This image resembles some notion of a laptop with the screen turned away from the viewer. Is it hiding something? The back of the screen faces the viewer with a staccato rhythm of horizontal bands of black and white that calls to mind the binary circulatory system of one’s and zero’s which is the lingua franca of communication devices. The back seems to be expandable like an accordion or a venetian blind, suggesting pliancy and also evoking a presence that is quite ‘shield-like’ at the same time. The screen itself is not viewable, however an aura of lavender suggests that it’s ‘on’.
Orange (split), 2014
Marcie Miller Gross
“Through an incremental means of building with utilitarian materials, industrial felt, wood, paper towels, felted wool sweaters, I make sculpture, installations and drawings that study mass, void, density and weight, compression and release. Within these qualities, I find parallels in the physical and psychological states of the body, sensory knowledge and the human condition. Orange (split) further explores my fascination with the relationship of materiality and elemental, abstract form in both object and image. With the accumulative layers of marks and line, I study these qualities and the potent saturation and physicality of color.”
– Marcie Miller Gross –
Trabajo, 1993
Ed Paschke
“The diversity and range of humanity is represented (black-Hispanic-white) in conjunction with a large bird. Racial and ethnic differences tend to create conflict and divide people. The bird represents work (trabajo) through which people overcome their differences and build a better world.”
– Ed Paschke –
Adrift, 1996
Robert Stackhouse
Adrift is not so much a specific vessel as a way to convey the essence of concrete types of vessel forms, or embody important parts deep within our memory. The enclosing volumetric nature also intentionally alludes to the coffin form. His images and structures frequently have the transcendental quality of things long dead rising to a new and higher form. A ship’s skeleton from the bottom of the sea may take on cathedral-like characteristics in a gallery space or the open air.
“Adrift is printed on black paper which adds to the ship’s (the Queen Mary is the vessel depicted) ominous presence; water sloughs off its bow as it punches out of the gloom into the viewer’s space in a way that it would not if the underlying black were a printed surface.”
– excerpt from Robert Stackhouse: Editions Archives –
Ruby Lawrence, 1995
Robert Stackhouse
The coiled crimson snake of Ruby Lawrence is an image seen in Stackhouse’s work since the mid eighties. While the serpent touches a deeply ingrained fear in us, it is hard not to be drawn to this elegant, richly textured image, to go past the initial, involuntary recoil, and see its simple, quiet beauty.
Blackburn, 2002
Ron Adams
Bob Blackburn is something of a legend in 20th century printmaking. He established Printmakers Workshop in New York in 1940 where it still operates as a significant contributor to the advancement of fine art printmaking. He was also the first master printer at Universal Limited Art Editions in New York, responsible for some of the very first editions by 20th century masters like Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers, Robert Raushenberg and others.
Ron Adams was a printer at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles and Editions Press in San Francisco before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he established Hand Graphics, another significant press in the Southwest. He is now retired from printing and publishing, and back to his original career as a graphic artist. For several decades these two men were the only African American Master Lithographers in the country. This original, hand-printed lithograph is one Master Printer’s respectful homage to another.
