Pulled, Pressed and Screened: Important American Prints at The Hyde Collection

Robert Cottingham - Orph, 1972 color lithograph on wove paper

Perhaps my biggest regret from my college experience is that I never studied printmaking. Aside from the fact that, outside of art school, it's hard to get access to a fully equipped print shop (and, so, it was an opportunity lost) I think I would have enjoyed the processes. And I'm sure I would be a smarter person now if I had learned some of those complex techniques then.

Jim Dine - Self Portrait Zinc + Acid, 1964
etching on wove paper

That's one reason I wholeheartedly urge you to see Pulled, Pressed and Screened: Important American Prints at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, on view through Jan. 10. Organized by the Syracuse University Art Collection, Pulled, Pressed and Screened features 51 prints by as many artists and spans the decades from 1930 to 1980.

This gorgeous selection makes clear how important printmaking is to 20th-century American art and provides a wonderful window onto our history. It's also easy to love, as many of the artists are familiar names, including Grant Wood, Robert Blackburn, Jasper Johns, Helen Frankenthaler, Milton Avery, Romare Bearden, and Dorothy Dehner.

Anne Ryan - Three Figures, 1948
color woodcut on black wove paper

From those names alone you begin to get the picture - high quality, diversity, and commitment to the medium are hallmarks of the work gathered here. There are also many lesser-known but marvelous artists in the group, such as Boris Margo, who invented the "cellocut," a precursor to the collagraph that uses colorless plastic to create embossed relief. His example, titled Comet, is elegant and quietly beautiful and was one of my favorites in the show. Another discovery was a 1948 color woodcut on black paper by Anne Ryan. Titled Three Figures, it could almost have been a Klee or Miro print.

Jasper Johns - Periscope, 1981
color intaglio on wove paper

Like Ryan, many of the artists in this collection are primarily printmakers, especially several from the middle period of the show when graphic art retained a special place in a nation still establishing its values. The show is organized somewhat chronologically and somewhat by theme (hung on walls painted a perfect shade of ochre), so these more socially conscious artists, such as Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Ben Shahn, and Antonio Frasconi, are grouped nicely together, giving us food for thought along the way. We also get a good variety of techniques to study here, such as wood engraving, linocut, and lithography.

Alex Katz - White Petunia, 1969
lithograph on wove paper

There's always the question of whether an established painter who makes prints is really a printmaker at all, but the artists included here generally delved into the medium - they didn't just use it to reproduce their paintings, but explored it as a realm unto itself. Roy Lichtenstein is a strong illustration of this idea. In his embossed 1976 screenprint Entablature VII (reproduced at the bottom of this post) you see how the print itself is his goal - with lush exploitation of the milky white paper, metal foil additions, and unusual pebbly embossing, he has created something special that is not much like a painting at all.

Among the earlier examples in the show are many immigrants, often using the graphic medium as a people's art form and as a platform to communicate ideas about social progress. This includes Harry Gottlieb, a Romanian native whose The Strike is Won is vintage WPA propaganda; Yasuo Kuniyoshi's Aerialist, which portrays a high-wire artist as a real person; and Minna Wright Cintron's acerbic Men Seldom Make Passes, which simultaneously amuses and flirts with early abstraction. Also in this group are icons of the Depression era: Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, Stuart Davis, and Wood.

After a period that emphasized abstraction, it's interesting to note that some of the later work in the show returns to social issues, with examples by Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol leading the way, capped off by a Vito Acconci six-part acquatint from 1979-81 that combines the flags of the U.S, the Soviet Union, and China. A lot has happened since, in politics and art, but Pulled, Pressed and Screened still packs a nice punch. Try to see it if you can.

Also, please note the Hyde is "pay as you wish" for the month of December.

Roy Lichtenstein - Entablature VII, 1976, screenprint embossing on wove paper

Recommended viewing

Oded Hirsch - Totchka, 2010 still from video

This is the first time I'm recommending a show I haven't seen, but circumstances have forced my hand, as I've been unable to get there and time is seriously running out. The current exhibition at the University at Albany Art Museum, which runs through Saturday (Dec. 12) features two big-time artists who are represented by New York City galleries.

Brian Tolle - Out of Service, 2010
Platinum silicon rubber and crutches

Though this by no means guarantees a great show, I've got a good feeling about Brian Tolle: Bordering Utopia, which is a retrospective of fascinating-looking sculptures (images at right and below), and Oded Hirsch: Three Videos (image above), which I will be viewing last-minute this weekend.

Maybe I'll run into you there, and we can compare notes on whether we like this stuff or not, and why. Please feel free to comment here on your experience. I may come back with additional commentary of my own - this time, after seeing the show.

Brian Tolle - Alice and Job, 2006
hand-carved Styrofoam, robotics and acrylic paint

Tick/Zellin at the PhotoCenter

Agnes Zellin - untitled photograph from Astoria N.Y., late 1970s or early 1980s

In an extreme case of better late than never, two bodies of work by photographers Paul Tick and Agnes Zellin have been mounted in a beautifully conceived exhibition at the PhotoCenter of the Capital District in Troy, on view through Dec. 13 (PhotoCenter hours are Th-Fr, 5-9, and Sat-Sun, 12-6).

Agnes Zellin - untitled photograph from Astoria N.Y.
late 1970s or early 1980s

Originally urged by their mutual mentor Mel Rosenthal more than 35 years ago, this event is the curatorial baby of Mark Kelly (creator of the former Exposed Gallery of Art Photography in Delmar), who designed and planned the installation, along with a handsome short-run book that accompanies it. Kelly has done an admirable job of presenting two collections that share many characteristics but are also quite distinct from one another.

There are many stories behind these photographs, including that of their makers, who are married to each other now. The pictures fall cleanly into the category of "concerned photography" - not quite journalism, not quite art; rather, a form of personal documentary that held sway for decades from the WPA era, through the heyday of Life magazine, and into the 1970s, when Tick and Zellin were learning their craft and prowling New York City with their cameras.

Paul Tick and Agnes Zellin

photo by Tricia Cremo

In those days, just about everybody was shooting black-and-white 35mm film in the street (a habit I understand is making a big comeback today). One feature that sets these two apart from that crowd is that they did not just grab and run. Instead, they formed relationships with their subjects and present them with an unusual depth. They also take a rather sociological stance, which comes across readily at a level of caring that many photographers lack.

It takes energy to care, and time; Tick and Zellin gave it, and this exhibition demands it of the viewer, too. The pictures are touching, many are melancholy, some are even heartbreaking. But they are neither exploitative nor facile. Tick's approach is to get to know his subjects - every one of them a bottom-of-the-gutter Bowery drunk - then capture them in beautiful portraits, which are paired with their own matter-of-fact utterances (handwritten by the photographer). The results resonate across the decades and connect directly to our souls.

Paul Tick - Untitled photograph 1978

Zellin created her larger series (there are 32 of hers, 22 of his) as a long-form essay about an ethnic neighborhood in Queens, where she clearly was part of the scene and enjoyed what appears to be easy access to her relaxed subjects. Her scenes of everyday (or night) activities are sweet and sensitive, and speak of a time and place that's becoming rare in North America, when people knew their neighbors like family.

The work is presented without titles, mats or frames, cleanly printed with white borders using modern digital technology, and it looks really good on the walls. The book is equally appealing, and I understand has sold out a first run already. Both are well worth a good, long look.

Paul Tick untitled photograph from Manhattan, 1978

Metroland - RIP?

Today marks the third Thursday without a Metroland since the alt weekly's office was seized by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance for unpaid tax bills, and the feeling that it will never publish again is sinking in. (You can read the details in this Times Union article by Paul Grondahl.) Along with thousands of other individuals and hundreds of businesses, I miss it already.

My own connections to Metroland  are many and deep - it was founded 38 years ago by my niece Amy's other uncle, Peter Iselin, a very talented musician whose disco-inspired venture into publishing lasted a surprisingly long time. But Peter was never great at the business end of the deal, and thefre was visible evidence of that early on.

My own favorite recollection from the middle 1980s featured weekly sprints by staffers from the Metroland offices at 4 Central Avenue to cash their paychecks at the bank up the street before the account ran dry. I had a front-row seat to this competition from my shop window on Washington Avenue, and always enjoyed the show.

Things got a little better when Steve Leon took the helm. I freelanced for the paper under Steve in three stints totaling seven or eight years spread over three decades, initially as a photographer and then mainly as a writer, covering a variety of subjects including art (no surprise) and professional basketball (in the heyday of the Albany Patroons).

The rates for freelancers were pretty generous, and I always got paid, though it sometimes took a while. But then the pay lag began to stretch too far, so I asked for a meeting with Steve to clarify my need to get paid timely enough to cover my rent. That's when he showed me a ledger that revealed 120-day accounts payable for advertising that totaled a quarter of a million dollars. This was about 10 years ago - before the Great Recession stepped up and began wiping out newspapers all over the country.

After I quit the paper for the last time, I learned from other freelancers who had hung on that Metroland's debt to them had extended well beyond a year and had mounted into the thousands of dollars for many individuals. To me, this was unforgivable - the paper was essentially floating an interest-free loan on the backs of struggling journalists - yet I still eagerly grabbed and read it every week. Except, of course, in those weeks when it didn't get distributed because the delivery people were also fed up with waiting for their money.

So, when this month's news revealed the paper's tax problems with the state, I couldn't have been less surprised. Also, it rang another personal bell - I worked as a state tax collector from 2012-14. And, from that experience, I could guess that Metroland was buried in debt to the IRS as well, not to mention imaginable lines of other creditors. In another small twist for me, I also learned that another former employer of mine (The Daily Gazette, where I worked for 13 years as an editor) might have wanted to buy Metroland if the debts could have been cleared up.

Now it seems that one possibility is lost, and it's a loss for all of us. Metroland - thanks for a really great run.

Fiber Currents/Current Fiber at FMCC

Patricia Kennedy-Zafred - Childhood Lost: The Doffer Boys, mixed-media cotton quilt

A long wished-for exhibition is now a reality at Fulton-Montgomery Community College's Perrella Gallery in Johnstown. Gallery Director Joel Chapin wanted a national fiber show, but needed expert help in creating it. He found that help in the form of Bleecker fiber artist Judith Plotner, who agreed to take on the project - the result is Fiber Currents/Current Fiber, on view through Dec. 18.

A first-time (and, according to her, also last-time) curator, Plotner has ably organized a diverse selection of 21 artists from all over the United States to fill this clean and pleasant (if somewhat tight) space with high-quality and engaging fiber-based work. These are not your great-grandmother's log cabin quilts (though quilting is strongly present); rather, this is contemporary art by top-shelf makers who utilize cloth, thread, vines, wire, plastic - and much more - to realize their personal visions.

Judith Content - Icarus, dyed satin silk

I'm a color guy, and my expectation to be dazzled by bright, rich fabrics was immediately fulfilled: The largest piece in the show is visible straight across from the entrance, and it positively glows with the energy of a brilliant palette. Pat Pauly (Rochester, N.Y.) hand-cut, hand-pieced, and hand-quilted numerous vividly printed and dyed fabrics to create the 6-foot-by-7-foot Pink Leaf 4 (yellow), a nature-inspired abstract that would rival any modern painting. It also graces the cover of a handsome catalog that was produced for the show and features full-page color reproductions of each work in Fiber Currents.

Emily Dvorin - Kid Stuff, mixed media

Judith Content (Palo Alto, Calif.) also drew my attention with her shibori dyed silk satin hanging Icarus, which updates the Greek myth, takes it east via a kimono shape, and drenches it in a rainbow of colors. Other explosions of color come from two of the four sculptural pieces in the show: Emily Dvorin's (Kentfield, Calif.) irresistible Kid Stuff incorporates dollar-store materials into a playful basket form; and Jill Rumoshosky Werner (Bella Vista, Ariz.) presents a snaking belt of multi-hued cotton that loops out of a propped-open clamshell box. Both pieces, being quite animated, are a welcome break from the preponderance of wall-hung work.

Judith Plotner - Brooklyn Ensemble
printed, stitched and painted canvas

On the other end of the spectrum, many works here use a limited palette, and many of those incorporate images derived from photographs, often applying them to the fabric with printmaking techniques. This is a successful strategy that can add texture as well as content to the works, and set them apart from their siblings in the craft world. Among these pieces are a few that take on social issues, such as Patricia Kennedy-Zafred's (Murrysville, Pa.) haunting and beautiful Childhood Lost: The Doffer Boys (pictured at the top of this post), Linda Kolsh's (Middletown, Md.) masterfully delicate Twilight, and Plotner's own Brooklyn Ensemble.

In addition to Plotner, Niskayuna's Lori Lupe Pelish and Russell Serrianne of Glens Falls (the show's lone male participant), represent the greater Capital Region. Serrianne's use of shellacked grape vines perhaps pushes the definition of fiber the furthest - along with New York City artist Nancy Koenigsberg's Melon, a "drawing in metal" that uses nothing but copper wire to depict a pumpkin-ish fruit.

Lori Lupe Pelish - The Circus Life
appliqued, embroidered and quilted fabric

Pelish uses elaborate piecing technique to create detailed portraits out of printed fabric, as in The Circus Life, while other artists in the show achieve a similar richness by combining imagery with heavy stitching, especially Dominie Nash (Bethesda, Md.) and Wen Redmond (Strafford, N.H). Still others achieve these depths with stitching and surface treatment alone, including Kevan Lunney (East Brunswick, N.J.) and Sue Cavanaugh (Columbus, Ohio), whose triptych Ori-Kume #31 is among the most impressive works in the show, both technically and in its effect on the viewer.

Many of the artists in Fiber Currents incorporate words into their work, often for political purposes (such as Highland Park, Ill.'s Kathy Weaver, work pictured below), which places this show squarely in the postmodern time frame - a time when artists have pushed all kinds of boundaries. Though here the primary boundary is one of materials (and it is well stretched by the artists included) it makes sense that these same artists are stretching other boundaries as well.

Kathy Weaver - Habeus Corpus-The Great Writ
nylon line and airbrushed, hand-stitched cotton

Many Rivers at Saratoga Arts

Frank Wimberley - Blue Wave, 1982 acrylic on canvas 

If you don't want to miss the Saratoga Arts exhibition Many Rivers, which celebrates the 40-year history of Black Dimensions in Art, Inc., go now, because it ends on Nov. 7.

I'm glad I caught it, even if toward the last minute, because it is a rich compendium of outstanding artists in many media, and because it is a thoughtfully curated show with a compelling theme. Organized by Stephen J. Tyson and Stanwyck E. Cromwell (who also both have work in the show), Many Rivers includes more than 40 works by 21 artists from a broad geography - mostly local, but with roots from many distant lands and islands.

Daesha Devon Harris - My Soul has Grown
Deep Like the Rivers, 2012 mixed media 

The title theme was presented to each artist (or artist's estate) with a request to provide work in response to it  - so, not unexpectedly, water does predominate, However, the show is grouped into sub-themes that suggest other topics, such as abstraction, light, cultural history, storytelling, travel, and more. The purpose of the BDA is to give support to artists of the African diaspora, so one finds works here that express this reality - for example, a brightly colored, thickly painted oil by Cromwell titled Allusions of Home, which conjures up his memories and (possibly) dreams of a Guyana he hasn't seen in decades, or Robert Charles Hudson's 2015 Shoofly, a painting the colors and patterns of which evoke centuries of folk art, underscored by his incorporation of a quilted square in its center.

Hudson's combination of disparate media is right in the mainstream of this show - I was struck by the preponderance of collage elements through about half of the work, including Hollis King's wry and lovely graphic Beehive Lady, Elizabeth Zunon's charming children's book illustration I can hear that whistle blow ... and Femi Johnson's Black Betty the Mermaid, which is simultaneously seductive and threatening. Perhaps the best of these mixed-media creations is Daesha Devon Harris' trio of manipulated and embellished photographs, which are placed behind glass that's etched with compelling snippets of folk writing.

Betty Blayton - Ancestor Bearing Light, 2007
acrylic and mixed media on canvas

I was also struck by the deep streak of abstract expressionism in the show, best exemplified by three exquisite paintings from the great Frank Wimberley, but also strongly represented in works by Betty Blayton, who includes three sweet tondo paintings partially inspired by jazz, and Tyson's snappy black-white-and-red acrylic inspired by the decorated dwellings of his forebears in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Also particularly worthy of note are three paintings on paper by Herbert Gentry, who died in 2003, and had a long career in France (like many African-American jazz musicians) - one immediately picks up on the mid-century Frenchness of these remarkably fresh works.

Though the show is a retrospective of sorts, a healthy chunk of the work is dated 2015, so it lives more in the present of these artists - and the broad movement they represent - than it does in the past, which suggests a potent future for the BDA organization as it enters its fifth decade. Kudos to the organizers and to Saratoga Arts for presenting this fine collection.

Elizabeth Zunon - I can hear that whistle blow ... , 2009 oil paint and collage

Janet Werner: Zero Eyes at Esther Massry Gallery

The painter with one of her works. All other images are oil on canvas by Janet Werner.

Regular readers of this blog know I rarely run a negative review. There are several reasons for this, the main one being that I write about art to build enthusiasm for it, not to knock it down. Usually, if I see something I'm not keen on, I will just let it go. But there are times that something falls short, and I feel it must be pointed out. You can tell  this is going to be one of those times - but always remember, my opinion is nothing compared to each viewer's personal response to the art - and I urge you always to seek your own experience.

Jelly 2010

So Zero Eyes, the current exhibition of paintings by Janet Werner, on view at The College of Saint Rose's Esther Massry Gallery through Dec. 6, is not my cup of tea. Why don't I like it? Tough question! But I'll do my best to explain.

First, let me say, Werner is a legitimate painter, with a degree from Yale and work in many collections (mostly in her native Canada) - not a hack or a neophyte. And the 16 generally quite large paintings in this selection demonstrate that she has control of her medium. But she chooses to exercise this control to make, by turns, cloyingly sentimental, hammer-over-the-head ironic, or just plain sloppy images. This is annoying.

Stalker 2012

Werner's colorful, daring work unfortunately falls squarely into the realm of (stifling a huge yawn here) gender and identity politics. Her approach seems to be to start with a fashion photograph, then recast the "ideal" woman in the picture as a monster. Werner's figures tend to be elongated even for supermodels, with undersize heads, awkward bodies and random parts - hands, nose, breasts - that go huge.

Girlfriend 2014

The scale of her paintings is sometimes played to great advantage, such as in the inexplicably titled Stalker, which, at nine feet tall, still lets a vast swath of grey paint crowds its office-worker subject into the bottom of the frame. Another strong vertical, titled The Glove, presents a red-haired debutante type on a hot pink background. Her haughty gaze is rendered with deft, layered strokes - but the titular magenta garment is slapped out crude and flat, with a cartoon daisy drooping from its grasp.

Moriah 2015

The work in the show covers a fairly long slice of time (2009 to 2015), affording the viewer a general sense of Werner's progress - from smaller to bigger, from playful to grotesque, from believable to bizarre. Among the latest pieces, Moriah shows the most promise by splitting the figure down the middle, obscuring its face not with simple defilement as in many of the others but with destructive transformation.

With 50 years of American feminism under our belts, it's easy to see what Werner is trying to say - but does it all bear repeating? Maybe it's important, after deKooning's take on scary women, for a woman painter to have her say. But I wonder - what does it add?