‘Women Printmakers of Austin: Under Pressure’
Pump Project, 720 Shady Ln.
Through March 26
There are many ways of making prints and many kinds of ink and many kinds of material to print upon, of course. And there are several artists represented in this new show from Women
Printmakers of Austin. We’re going to focus, albeit briefly, on just a few here, but rest assured that the whole show – elegantly arranged on the Pump Project’s accommodating walls – is well worth your time.
Unlike most of the other printmakers, Amanda McInerney has only one work on display, but its eerie beauty has the impact of a roomful of art. It’s called Constituo, and it’s an etching. It’s a color etching on fine handmade paper, depicting what appears to be a bloodstream with leukocytes rampant, part of the artist’s series of magnified biological cells. (You can see those on the WPOA website.) In fact, there are three etchings like this, hanging side by side in the same simple wooden frame – like a trio of enlarged microscope slides collaborated on by Albrecht Dürer and Showtime’s Dexter. Small, quiet as the movement of blood through your veins, but powerful.
Jo Lagattuta’s Captured in Time is a mixed-media piece with found objects, grounded by a multicolored paper monotype cut and complexly braided to form a circle like a clockface. In the sunken center of that face sits a bright metal watch and, at the cardinal points, bits of polished mother-of-pearl. It’s like discovering some hybrid of abstract horology and bright paper craft capable of rendering an aesthetic djam karet.
Kelly Tankersley’s prints are most often multilayered and taken directly from nature – not just the subject matter but also the materials used. Her sublime Cathedral of Flight, for instance, features paper made from plants in her personal garden, upon which images are lavished (the silhouette of birds flocking around a tree, an arcane symbol above) rendered via polymer gravure solar plate, pronto plate, carborundum collograph, and painting by hand. Look at any of her works for a while, and the ghostly visuals seem almost like a lagniappe: The paper itself is so lovely, so carefully crafted, it’d be compelling with an accidental blotch of ink on it.
The whole show, in fact, is lovely and carefully crafted; not an exhibition that screams in your face or tries to make you flinch, but an exhibition of ancient techniques that invites contemplation and appreciation of textures not to be found on the surface of a computer screen.
This article appears in March 18 • 2011.