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Distinguishing marks
North American Print Biennial highlights a semester of impressive impressions

By Eric McHenry

It takes about 10 unsettling seconds to realize what's wrong with this street map of New York.

Everything has a German name - it must be a German map. But why is Brooklyn called Potsdam? And what inept translator has turned the Statue of Liberty into the Pillar of Triumph (Siegessäule)? It isn't until the eye, expecting Grammercy Park, finds Adolf Hitler Platz that the map's horrifying counterfactual proposition takes hold.

"It's extremely effective," says Deborah Cornell, assistant professor of visual arts and chair of SFA's Printmaking Area, "because you don't get it right away. You say, 'Oh, yeah, this is Manhattan. But wait. Why is Central Park called the Tiergarten?'"

To create the 43" by 27" lithograph, printmaker Melissa Gould drew its various layers on large plates of aluminum, then treated them chemically to retain ink only in the areas with drawing. Printing the image, layer by layer, from these plates allowed her to produce the crisp lines and even color that give the image its maplike matter-of-factness.

The piece, "Neu-York," is one of about 170 selected for display in the 2001 North American Print Biennial, an exhibition that will occupy BU's 808 Gallery from February 18 through April 8. Sponsored by the Boston Printmakers and the BU School for the Arts, the Biennial is the centerpiece of a spring semester with a strong printmaking emphasis. Companion shows include a solo exhibition of the celebrated printmaker Pat Steir (SFA'58) in the GSU's Sherman Gallery and a collection of prints from Boston workshops in the BU Art Gallery.

David Kiehl, curator of prints for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, considers some of the pieces he's chosen for inclusion in the 2001 North American Print Biennial. Having narrowed the field of 1,600 submissions to about 170 selections, he is picking the show's award winners. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

David Kiehl, curator of prints for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and juror for the Biennial, made his selections from about 1,600 submitted slides. On December 11, he moved thoughtfully through the 808 Gallery, choosing the Biennial's award winners from the prints he'd already juried in. His participation, Cornell explains, is a mutually beneficial arrangement. As a museum curator, he gets to see an array of new works by established and emerging artists. The Biennial, in turn, benefits from one of the best eyes in the field.

"He has a tremendous range of knowledge and an amazing visual memory," Cornell says. "When he was viewing submissions, a carousel was inadvertently repeated, and he immediately said, 'No, we've seen this already.' We'd probably been through 1,200 slides at that point, and he remembered that he had seen that one work."

Printmaking is an expansive art form. Comprising four fairly broad categories - relief (woodcuts), intaglio (engraving, etching), lithography, and serigraphy (silk screening) - the genre grows as artists modify traditional techniques, use them in combination, and introduce new elements, such as digital images.

"Printmaking is really an enveloping term," says Cornell. "In general, it has to do with the impressed image, with layering, with the idea of making a page, and with the luscious, tactile qualities of the medium, which are different from all the other luscious, tactile media that we have."

The form's inherent diversity, multiplied by the different thematic concerns of over 100 artists, amounts to a show of endless visual variety.

"It's a wonderful showcase," says Marjorie Javan, president of the Boston Printmakers. "Everything in this show has been done in the last two years. This is really the only opportunity that people in the area get to see a wide variety of work from around the country that's absolutely contemporary."

Elegant, traditional woodcut landscapes will hang alongside works that put popular culture under a magnifying glass or hold it up to a funhouse mirror. One print looks like the weather-worn cover of a 500-year-old cereal box: familiar winged cherubs gaze up at an enlarged spoonful of "Post® Raphael-Lites."

Pace Maker, an aquatint and transfer print from a recent suite of Cornell's called Requiem Canticles, juxtaposes the computer-scanned image of a wilting fern with an X-ray of a young boy's torso in which a pacemaker has been implanted. The similarity of the fern's tendrils and the boy's ribs makes for a striking study.

"The whole suite is about the end of things - things I worry about," says Cornell, a highly regarded printmaker. If it doesn't register with the viewer that the device is a pacemaker, she says, that's all right. "You just have to know that machines and human bones are coming together."

This will be the second consecutive Biennial staged at BU, and the second to include a juried selection of student work along with the exhibition proper. The Arches Student Print Show, sponsored by Arches Paper, allows emerging printmakers from regional college and university art programs to share the gallery with some of the nation's best-known artists.

"It's wonderful for the students," says Javan, "because they're showing in the same room with all the big-time printmakers they've heard about.

"When we did the first student show two years ago, it really worked well," she says. "We made a little catalogue for the students, and a lot of people came and bought their work. The kids were just thrilled."

The North American Print Biennial will run from February 18 through April 8, 2001, in the 808 Gallery. For more information, call 358-1034. Pat Steir: Prints will occupy the GSU's Sherman Gallery from March 15 through April 22, 2001. For more information, call 358-0295. The exhibition of prints from Boston workshops will be held March 2 through April 8, 2001.

15 December 2000
Boston University
Office of University Relations