‘Common Threads’ weave in and out at the Printmaking Council’s member show.
By:Josh Appelbaum
There is an element of surprise in the process of making a fine art print that can give new meaning to an artist’s work.
Princeton-based artist Janet Hautau created the Xerox and fiber collage "Corda de Vita" translated from the Italian "chord of life" from a knitting faux pas. A personal expression documenting her life, the print uses ascarf that is a bit uneven, and is unraveled at one end.
"It’s about the first third of my life from my birth to when I got married and had my first child," Ms. Hautau says. "It is a collage of all these photographs I’ve had forever. I color Xeroxed them and (scaled) them down to one or two inches and inserted them into openings I had made in the knitted scarf. But the beginning of the scarf is unraveled, because at the beginning of life, nothing is formed."
Ms. Hautau, who has worked as a graphic designer and teaches watercolor painting at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, draws on commercial design skills and applies them to fine art.
She has been making prints since 1990 and usually creates them from her own sketches or photographs. But she says the nature of printmaking allows her to make use of non-traditional materials as well, including the hapless scarf. She says prints take on a life of their own through the imperfect creative process. "It’s the element of the unknown and surprise that I like," Ms. Hautau says. "When you print something you get a third element, and the most exciting part is that you never know what’s going to happen."
"Corda de Vita" is one of 32 pieces that comprise the Printmaking Council of New Jersey’s eclectic Open Members’ Exhibition, Common Threads, which is on view through May 7. The show focuses on fabric-based prints and includes various executions of printing techniques, including monotype, collagraph, relief, intaglio and silkscreen, among others. The exhibit is a hodgepodge of sorts, but many pieces explain personal stories by the artists or explore universal themes like humanity and equality. Fabric including flax, hand-made and woven and archival and rag paper are the elements that unify the work in the exhibition.
New Hope, Pa., artist Barbara Zietchick conveys her ideas about the universality of the human experience in her collagraph "Brethren." She says the artificial barriers of race, religion and gender prevent people from recognizing what they have in common. In her work, she focuses on the traits shared among all people, across these barriers. "I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve found that people are more the same than different," Ms. Zietchick says. "Everyone is looking for intimacy, say between a couple, or togetherness from the love of their family or society."
A painter and a member of the Print Society at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pa., Ms. Zietchick says "Brethren" evolved from a painting she made that is currently on view at the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton. Ms. Zietchick says to complete a print, she might do a few pressings and manipulate the image several times until it strikes her. "It’s so intriguing it’s really an adventure you can change so many things according to what you see on the paper," Ms. Zietchick says. "Printmaking, to me, is like having a conversation."
One of the most provocative and political pieces in Common Threads is "At Home in the U.S.A.," Erena Rae’s digital pigment print on archival Hahnemuhle cotton rag. The photograph at the center of the piece looks to be printed on an embroidered pillowcase. Rainbow-colored letters spell out "Sweet Dreams" above the photograph, which shows a pile of blankets on a city street that served as a bed for a homeless person. Ms. Rae says she photographed the scene on a cold winter’s morning on a street not far from the White House in Washington, D.C. in what she calls "our very rich nation."
"At Home in the U.S.A.," Ms. Rae says, is typical of her previous artwork in that it focuses on social issues and comments on "the ephemeral nature of women’s art," by allowing the viewer to believe the photograph is actually printed on a cotton pillowcase. "In the past, most women were only allowed to do handkerchiefs and other types of functional art that by nature and design were destined for destruction," she says.
In accompanying text, guidelines are provided for the use of at-home cards. On a fence behind the bed, Ms. Rae has imposed (in the form of litter on the fence) what could be an at-home card from President George W. Bush and first lady Laura. President Bush’s image is "subtly superimposed three times on the vertical right-most column where he can look down on the results of his compassionate conservatism," Ms. Rae’s artist’s statement reads.
After completing a series of prints using handkerchiefs, Ms. Rae decided to use a pillowcase design for "At Home in the U.S.A." because, as she writes in her artist’s statement, "My own family lived modestly, but we always had a warm and comfortable place to lay our heads at night."
Ms. Rae doesn’t do "over-the-couch-type art," and says most people, besides her, don’t want social commentary on their walls. "Fabric is the common thread that kind of weaves in and out of society," Ms. Rae says. "It’s what unites us and what doesn’t."
Common Threads, Open Members’ Exhibition, is on view at the gallery at the Printmaking Council of New Jersey, 440 River Road, Somerville, through May 7. Hours: Wed.-Fri. 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Sat. 1-4 p.m. For information, call (908) 725-2110. On the Web: www.printnj.org