Printmaking and the Mundane…pics.

All the prints are in, and I am now in the process of packaging up portfolios and shipping them off. Thanks to everyone involved, I think we made a really great portfolio.

“Printmaking and the Mundane” was organized by Janet Marcavage and myself. It was inspired by the 2010 CAA Panel of the same name, organized by Janet Marcavage.

Due to its inherent means for reproduction, printmaking can be considered less precious than other art forms. This non-hierarchical medium lends itself to expressions of quotidian life. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, printmakers have been interested in representing the everyday, regardless of their generational artistic beliefs. Martin Lewis, Peggy Bacon, and John Sloan created prints about their ordinary experiences in the 1930s and ’40s. Ed Ruscha and Jim Dine both took their cues from Pop in the 1960s and ’70s, but focused much more on commonplace objects and locations. Today, printmakers like Vija Celmins, Randy Bolton, and the contemporary printmakers included in this portfolio focus on repetition, familiar narratives, and objects of urban life. This portfolio crosses generations and finds common ground through familiar experiences and images. It also asks questions about printmaking, communication, process, and the importance of one’s everyday experiences. How does the repetitive, manual labor of printmaking lend itself to recordings of the banal, unremarkable, or mediocre?