Wyoming Arts Council

"Origins" exhibit features printmaking by UW alumni

Uncategorized | February 9, 2011

---

Clay Paper Scissors Gallery in downtown Cheyenne is featuring an exciting new show this month called “Origins: Fifteen Years of Printmaking from Alumni of the University of Wyoming” It will run from Feb 1 to March 31.

Featuring the work of…

Nathan Abel, Michael Chavez, Katie Christensen, Rachael Eastman, Kazuko Goto, Sarah Hayman, Lisa Lofgren,Chancey Jahnig, Aaron Miller, Toni Mosley, Julia Goos Pence, Mark Ritchie, Sara Schleicher, Anna Tsantir, Kelly Valdez, Beth Wetzbarger, Michelle Winchell

All of the artists participating in Origins have at least one thing in common; they have all passed through the doors of the University of Wyoming in the past fifteen years under the direction of faculty member Mark Ritchie. The idea of the project came about, as many good things in the printmaking world do, over a few pints at printmaking conferences, with the final conversation taking place at the Mid-America Print Council conference in Fargo, North Dakota the fall of 2008.

Two years later the resulting portfolio and exhibition have already began to connect a number of Artist Printmakers who all have printmaking roots in Wainwright Bungalow number 1833 home of the print studio at the University.

As makers of multiples, printmakers have often created portfolio exchanges that allow all participants to share each other’s work. It is a lot like writing a note to someone, except in this case the 18 participants each have created an edition of 21 prints and each of them will receive a portfolio containing a print from all of the participants, the remaining three portfolios being for archiving and exhibiting.

As the prints came in it slowly became clear that many of the artists share more than just the print studio at the University of Wyoming. There are common themes present in some of the work, conversations between abstraction and object representation, even the sense of color and space used by each artist. So now the question arises if these similarities have roots from seeds planted in our print studio in Laramie or are they purely coincidental.

---