AUGEN PRINT INVITATIONAL
Augen Gallery is pleased to present its first print invitational, featuring over forty contemporary etchings, woodcuts, engravings, and screenprints by twelve artists. Representing a strong segment of the region, many artists presented here form the core of a print environment that is not only rich in number, but particularly communal and interactive, built upon decades of a shared passion.
Inkling Studio emerged in the 1980s as a central force in a Northwest printmaking scene already established in the 1950s-70s. Founded by artist Liza Jones, the studio provided a workspace for numerous artists, some of whom were faculty, students, or graduates of nearby programs at PNCA, PSU, and OSAC (then Oregon School of Arts and Crafts). Jones herself taught printmaking at OSAC, as did another early Inkling artist, Tom Prochaska. Until last year when it closed, Inkling served as a think tank where artists shared ideas and information while exploring printmaking processes.
Early Inkling members represented in Augen’s print invitational include Stephen Leflar, a PNCA grad whose small-scaled works reveal an acute sensitivity and pathos for untold emotional reaches of his human subjects. Leflar had taken printmaking classes at OSAC from both Jones and Prochaska before joining them at Inkling. Sheryl Funkhouser, also a PNCA grad, became another active member of the studio in its early years. There she established her signature etching style of disparate floating elements, tenuously anchored by delicate, finely interspersed patches of chine collé color. John Saling, a native Portlander and graduate of Seattle’s Cornish School of Allied Arts, is among the very few traditional copper engravers in the area. By 1983 he was a regular presence at Inkling. His meticulous prints reflect the patience, skill, and artistry of an Old World goldsmith, while his subjects are fluid reflections on contemporary life.
Through the 1990s, alongside Inkling’s earliest artist members, a new generation of printmakers joined the studio, several of whom are in Augen’s show— Nicole Rawlins majored in printmaking at OSU and currently runs the Printmaking program at Portland’s Multnomah Arts Center. Margaret van Patten graduated from PNCA’s printmaking department where she studied with Gordon Gilkey, Tom Prochaska, and Christy Wyckoff. Michael Southern moved to the area from the east and became, like John Saling, an influential instructor of etching in PNCA’s extension program. Each is a talented etcher in their own right. Rawlins excels at diminutively scaled figurative works in thematic suites; van Patten loosely ties heterogeneous subjects in ambiguous, associative interactions; Southern, known for his nuanced black and white landscape etchings, has in recent years turned toward the intricacies of insects as the focus of his art.
Overlapping activities, interests, and participants at Inkling and among the broader printmaking community of the area attest to a continuum of influence and inspiration. Christy Wyckoff, a graduate of Washington State University and longtime head of PNCA’s printmaking department, has had a substantial impact on printmaking in the region, upholding its place as an astutely contemporary art form. His adherence to teaching with emphasis on exposure to and interaction with international artists has continued to move printmaking forward in Portland. Wyckoff’s own exploration of natural subjects is often iterated in a seemingly abstracted, planar manner, though with an intuitive, organic sensitivity toward both the subject and his materials.
Wang Gongyi, invited by Gordon Gilkey in 1996 to take part in a Portland Art Museum Chinese print exhibition, was later invited back by Gilkey and Wyckoff to be an artist-in-residence at PNCA. A graduate and respected faculty member of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou, Wang decided after residencies in both France and Oregon to immigrate to the U.S. and make Portland her new home. With a resolutely contemporary calligraphic style grounded in traditional Chinese brushwork, Wang’s gestural hand motions are translated into softly ‘bitten’ etchings of Buddhist minimalism.
Wood engravers Paul Gentry and Susan Lowdermilk use the strong graphic interplay of black against white in carefully carved and inked relief prints. A self-taught printmaker and former student of painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gentry creates rural landscapes and architectural scenes with a nod toward 19th-century book illustration that attests to his instinctive ability and awareness of the history of his medium. Established as a printmaker and book artist, Lowdermilk received her MFA at U of O before joining the art faculty of Lane Community College. With titles that reveal her sense of wit, the artist’s beautifully executed subjects are mini narratives. Her single engraving in copper, made after a workshop conducted by John Saling, is of a loosened knot titled The Uncertainty of a Sure Thing.
Finally, two of the most recent converts to the art of printmaking are Guo Nan and Wendy Kahle, both of whom explored etching through the PNCA extension courses taught by Saling and Southern. A graduate of the Central Academy of Arts and Design in Beijing, Guo’s prints resonate with recollections of her home town of Chongqing, China, while obscured through an atmospheric veil of time and distance. Meanwhile, Kahle’s landscape etchings are tonal studies of living scenes captured in motion with attention toward natural light effects. Kahle, a graduate of U of O and former graphic designer, has recently returned to fine art through immersion in printmaking classes and workshops at PNCA, Marylhurst, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and Crown Point Press in San Francisco.