Boundless
Prints by Six Contemporary Artists
Randy Bolton, Teresa Cole, Michael Krueger, Leah Oates, Lauri Twitchell, Jennifer Yorke
Boundless was an exhibit curated by Kevin Haas for the Northwest Print Council in Portland, OR on display during the Crossing Boundaries International Print Symposium in October of 2001.
Teresa Cole. Vectors: Corners (Detail). Woodcut Installation. 48x96". 1999.
Curator's Statement
As of late there has been a great deal of concern with the ability of printmaking to engage in a broader dialogue within the arts. Recent discussions have focused on the issues of borders, boundaries and edges. Whether they are crossed, eliminated, ignored or feared, boundaries continually emerge anew. But now in our hyper pluralistic era, boundaries have become difficult to distinguish as each individual seeks his or her own way to confront limits and boundaries. Already long familiar to printmaking in many ways, these issues have been the focus of longstanding concern since prints and print artists have generally existed towards the margins of the art world. Many factors have determined this, foremost the art market but also print publishers. Published editions are often side projects for artists, having been invited by a publisher to produce prints based on the merit of work done in other media. Prints also share a long history of conventions inherent to the medium, separating it from other forms of art which categorically receive greater recognition. For instance, prints do not have a singular existence, but are in fact multiples available for distribution or commercial profit. This added dimension is sometimes explored for its special significance, but more commonly, it simply provides the satisfaction of a larger audience through increased opportunities for exhibition and possibly sales. For many artists who work outside the publishing and art market mainstream, in private studios, university print shops or cooperative presses, printmaking is however, a primary form of art making. In these situations it is a direct means of expression and communication that bears the same weight and relevance as other methods. So, is there now a greater anxiety over the perceived limits of printmaking and the role of the artist? Or, conversely, does it seem that boundaries have been so effectively eliminated that we now seek to reposition ourselves against new ones? Certainly both sides of this issue are apparent in contemporary printmaking as new technologies take their place within the medium's repertoire. Though drawing is often thought of as the foundation of printmaking, photomechanical and now digital methods of production share similar status in the history of the print. The relative newcomer of digital printmaking allows us to re-examine what may constitute a print. Although digital prints can share the same characteristic of traditional prints, pigment onpaper, the division between printmaking and photography has become increasingly unclear. Though not strictly photographs, digital works are not considered prints in regards to the traditional definition either. Digital media has catalyzed the convergence of once separate disciplines, quickly establishing new relationships and methods of production. Beyond materials and specific processes, emerges a view of the print as any number of means to explore images with the potential for reproduction. But despite upheavals for and against change, what will hopefully remain significant are changes that benefit the medium to provide new insights and possibilities. These concerns have undoubtedly surfaced due to the great many changes we are currently witnessing around us, technological and social in nature. Though technology often appears at the forefront of these changes, there are greater social, political, ideological and economic forces interwoven into this era of globalization. Globalization in the art world has taken form in the numerous biennials that have appeared in recent years. Such large-scale events showcase cultural identity and encourage its exchange while allowing the hosting country to become an accepted member of the growing global community. They have increased the awareness of culturally defining issues against those of other cultural groups. Even through the myriad of changes that have taken place in the last several decades what remains constant is the self-direction that each artist follows. This is the negotiation between individual limits and external boundaries and conventions. Inherently, individuality multiplies the diversity we witness in the arts and our perception of responses to cultural changes brought into focus by emerging boundaries. It is a system far from the two-dimensionality the word boundary lends itself to. The work in this exhibit manages to extend itself beyond conventions, while keenly examining the possibilities of prints and images, further enriching the medium and participating within the greater dialogue of contemporary issues. This exhibit is not an attempt to define contemporary printmaking or its future; instead it is an eclectic reflection of the vitality and potential the medium holds for us now.
Kevin Haas
August 2001
Randy Bolton
Randy Bolton releases the print from its frame and the wall, to penetrate into the gallery, connecting his landscapes with our own world both physical and mental. Adapting illustrations from early children’s books and science texts he puts a wry twist on the innocence these pictures once possessed for us. Still child-like in their use, the pictures on the two sides of these pieces are at odds with one another. These opposing forces self-consciously and playfully imply a tension in between the flat image and physical space but his motives are more portentous. He has supplanted the trust and security these illustrations once provided for us with antagonism and disillusionment. The worldview they now present is contradictory and confusing.
Teresa Cole
Teresa Cole’s prints are brief moments of the infinite. Vectors: Corner stretch across two adjoining walls belying the shallow space these prints portray. For Cole, pattern and repetition are tools of seduction. The duplicitous mirroring of this piece confuses our preconceptions of these patterns to imply a more three dimensional space. It acknowledges the physical limits of the space in which they are hung while implying the infinite through the use of pattern and perspective.
Lauri Twitchell
Lauri Twitchell uses bird songs as an abstract record of experience. Translated into dense vertical lines by an oscilloscope, the songs become both writing and drawing; journalistic entries documenting her environment. The use of technology plays an important factor in communication for Twichell. Although the bird-songs no longer exist in their aural state in Oregon 1998 – Book 1, movement and presence are sustained by the rhythm and texture of the vertical lines placed over the landscape she has photographed. Just as the songs have been translated from sound to image to document, she re-translates her book into a work viewable on the World Wide Web presenting alternative possibilities for communication.
Jennifer Yorke
The failure of reproductive images to present private identity is explored in the work of Jennifer Yorke. The anonymous identity of the sitters in her portraits is made even more inscrutable by blurring the images and the obviousness of the mechanical half-tone dots. The viewer strains to find distinguishing features and expressions in the portraits that have been further enlarged and cropped, but little is revealed. By exposing the limits of how we portray ourselves through images, she suggests that our true selves cannot be revealed or reconciled against interceding forms of reproduction and dispersal.
Michael Kreuger
Michael Kreuger’s work eliminates assumptions for what can and cannot be art. Layering drawings and class notes made in his high school notebooks with ones made 20 years later, he approaches art inclusively. He does not distinguish between images that are produced by an educated hand, or that of a daydreaming adolescent. Any moment in Krueger’s life provides equal opportunity to investigate imbalances, be they between the natural and the artificial or the familiar and the mythic. In the prints exhibited here, his comparisons examine subjective biases in education to reveal how we many have been misled. They are an attempt to dispel misinformation that has shaped our consciousness.
Leah Oates
Photographs capture ephemeral moments of perception subsequently transforming them into the residue of memories. By regrouping, layering and blurring her photos, Leah Oates creates digital prints and book works that sustain the wonder, confusion and fullness of experience at the edge of its disappearance. Her images condense the minute gestures, motions, words, sounds and images we perceive at any given moment in our lives transforming them into a macrocosm for us to explore anew. The works in the Duration series suspend time through mediation, rather than using it up or quickening its pace.