Dreamscapes at Southern Graphics

Print maven, Seattle-based Brian Lane, has organised a portfolio for the Southern Graphics Conference in my favourite city, Portland, Oregon, that runs from 30th March to 2 April 2016. Entitled Dreamscapes: The Ebb and Flow of Time and Possibility, this portfolio asked artists to address their subconscious, where past and future collide.My dreamscape print is a linocut which I made last year, showing a woman’s face partly hidden and transformed by the petals of a white chrysanthemum. The chrysanthemum flower is from Asia, and white ones signify grief and bereavement, traditionally placed on graves. Lined up, the women and the chrysanthemums appear like masked warriors, eyes shut contemplating the past and protected against the future.

Dreamscapes Portfolio statement reads

 ‘Our subconscious provides unfiltered access to the storage vault of memories, observations, feelings, and the day to day minutiae that we absorb without knowing.  This storage is virtually unlimited, yet in the waking state we have trouble accessing this surplus of info and rely on our known thoughts and experiences to guide us.  However, in the sleeping state our brain is trying to process everything, resulting in manifestations that bridge past, present, and future realities into a subconscious soup of abstracted yet cohesive possibilities. Often we can barely comprehend what these dreams mean or why certain people, places, or memories have surfaced after being suppressed for so long. Our dreams and nightmares become the vehicle that travels down the vast pathway of our imagination.’

Participants include

—————–

1. Brian Lane

2. Abraham Mong

3. Wuon Gean Ho

4. Kyle Huntress

5. Chris Dacre

6. Mare Blocker

7. Tyna Ontko

8. Chris Rollins

9. Travis Moorehead

10. Virginia Hungate Hawk

11. Amber Chiozza

12. Ashley Shumaker

13. Sean Smoot

14. Emma O’Leary

15. Nikki Barber

16. Ben Beres

17. Charlie Spitzack

18. Amy Oates

19. NateStottrup

Also at the SGCI conference, Marilyn Zornado and Barb Tetenbaum have coordinated a printmaking and animation showreel, which will be displayed on a video monitor in the atrium at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), and at the Univ. of Oregon’s Grey Box Gallery. 33 of 55 submitted films were selected, spanning the entire range of print techniques and created by artists from all over the world. My linocut animation, Shift, which shows a ghostly dancing dress, will be there.

Shift is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTyCksf-cCo

Grey Box Gallery, 24 NW 1st Ave. Portland, OR  http://whitebox.uoregon.edu/

22 Mar – 8 Apr, private view on 31 Mar 5–7pm

I wish I could be hopping on a flight to lovely Portland tomorrow to join in the fun… If anyone goes, please take some pictures for me!

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FOLD> portfolio

FOLD> is a portfolio of prints that I curated for the IMPACT 9 printmaking conference in Hangzhou, China, 22-26 September (starts tomorrow!) As I can’t make it, I’ve posted the portfolio to the organisers to display on my behalf. The conference questions the meaning and relevance of print in the digital age, so I thought the aspects of print that are not adequately conveyed in digital format are the tactile and the physical. The portfolio focusses on surface alterations and folds.

Radiant Intervals by Stephanie Beisel, screenprint

The word fold also has multiple interesting connotations referring to creases in cloth, in paper, in time, to movements of wings, the body, the land, and a secondary meaning of groups of animals or people. The addition of a fold to a sheet of paper has the effect of creating a folio, and creates space and orientation. The portfolio consists of prints that each have at least one fold, with final dimensions of an A4 piece of paper (21 x 29 cm). There were no restrictions on medium, size of image, size of paper, shape of paper, substrate, style, whether text, collage, hand coloured, glow in the dark, embossed, perforated, nor printmaking technique used. There were some interesting approaches, and I’m pleased with the final outcome. Here are some pictures below.

Untitled, by Mayra Gazinotti, screenprint

Untitled, by Mayra Gazinotti, screenprint

1:00:47 by Ronit Mirsky, screenprint

After the Flood, by Susannah Stark, Sceenprint and digital collage

Untitled, by Meiyi Wang, Linocut

White Face, White impressions by Amy Cornfield, face print and screenprint

Canyon and Cave, by Meg Rahaim, Digital Inkjet print

Moss by Gloria Ceballos, Screenprint

Roberto’s, by Rob Miles, linocut

Roberto’s, by Rob Miles, linocut

Las Brujas by Edén Barrena Gonzales, Lithograph

A huge thank you to the participants, and apologies to the ones whose work I did not photograph. This portfolio may be run again in the future, so please get in touch if you are interested in FOLD2> for the next impact conference in Lisbon in 2017!

Hold, by Wuon-Gean Ho, linocut

PS. Life zooms by and the world continues to shrink. I made work in the USA this summer, and am in shows in London, Japan and China in the next couple of months, but of course I haven’t got round to posting anything at all! Just to say that I do have work in the National Original Print Exhibition in the Bankside Gallery, 48 Hopton Street (next to the Tate Modern) in London from now until 27th September. These are the prints that are there: two of my newish monoprint screenprints measuring 112 x 76 cm.