An invitational show of etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, silkscreens, photogravures, and artist books by artists from Columbia County, the Hudson Valley, and New England runs through November 1.
"hadley corn field" by Liz Chalfin.
October 3–November 1, Fridays–Sundays, 1–5pm | Spencertown, NY
Spencertown Academy Arts Center is showing “Contemporary Printmaking,” an invitational group exhibition of ten artists, through November 1. The show is curated by Karen Andrews, Meryl Enerson, and David Lesako, who looked for artists in the region who are technical masters of their medium and who also reflect where printmaking is today. Lesako says the medium demands that its practitioners be technicians as well as artists. The prints range from representational to abstract and conceptual and include personal history, social and environmental concerns, text, oversize formats, and modern and nontraditional materials.
Four of the artists are from Columbia County. Frank Curran is a painter and printmaker in Stuyvesant who uses each practice to feed the other. Holly Hughes draws on the patterns in historical ceramics, tile, textiles, and inlay. Renee Iacone, who makes ceramic sculpture, has prints that echo her clay “Spikes and Stacks” series, and she runs HandShake Press in Ghent with Hughes. Anne Schaefer works in color and pattern across painting, screen-printing, and large installations.
Two come from the wider Hudson Valley. Erin Lobb Mason, an artist and musician from Louisville, Kentucky, now based upstate, makes prints about grief, sensuality, and queerness and works with local farms and land trusts. Amy Silberkleit draws landscapes on limestone blocks and hand-prints lithograph editions in her studio in Gilboa. The Albany Institute has two of her pieces in its collection.
The four New England artists are Liz Chalfin, Rachel Chapman, Steven Daiber, and Vaune Trachtman. Chalfin prints multiple plates she can use alone or in combination. Chapman makes color woodblock prints of the Western Massachusetts landscape. Daiber spent two decades working with Cuban printmakers on artist books about U.S.-Cuba relations and now makes prints from found materials in rural Massachusetts. Trachtman builds dreamlike images from archival negatives, mark-making, and text, drawing on the loss of her parents when she was young.
The exhibition is also viewable online.
Spencertown Academy Arts Center, 790 Route 203, Spencertown, NY. More at spencertownacademy.org.
