The Road Not Taken: Orit Hofshi
Etchings & Drypoints 2005-2008: Bill Scott
The Philadelphia Etchings: Janet Towbin
Moon Studies and Star Scratches: Sharon Harper
Dakar Portraits: Vera Viditz-Ward
That's Women's Work: Laura Wagner
Time after Time: Community Pinhole Projects
81st International Competition: Printmaking
Abu Ghraib Detainee Interview Project: Daniel Heyman
Books: Photographic Sequences: Ditta Baron Hoeber
Dream: James Stogdill
Prints by New Jersey Artists: 15 Years of the Brodsky Center
New work: Barbar Duval
Ann Hamilton Photographs in Historic Philadelphia’s Sites
Vera Lutter’s Camera Obscura at 30th Street Station
TAKEN WITH TIME, a Camera Obscura Project in Philadelphia
Diamonds are Forever: Edna Andrade
The Guides: Justyna Badach
Short Stories: A Narrative in Mezzotint by Art Werger
Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Grant Award
Sun Pictures and Other Broken Images: Richard Torchia
The Print Center’s 90th Anniversary Exhibition
On My Own: Recent Philadelphia Graduates Abelardo Morell, Internationally Known Photographer
Recent Prints: Elizabeth Osborne
79th Annual International Competition: Printmaking
90th Anniversary: Nurturing the New Exhibition and Gala
Camouflage: Carl Fudge
New Work: Keith Johnson
The Suburban Landscape: Phil Marquez

The Road Not Taken: Orit Hofshi
February 28 – May 17, 2008

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces The Road Not Taken, an exhibition of epically scaled woodcut prints by Israeli artist Orit Hofshi.  The exhibition includes four prints on paper and one large piece created from the carved wooden planks which form the matrix used for printing. The works are loosely constructed narratives featuring isolated figures in desolate landscapes.

The painstakingly carved lines in Hofshi’s work reveal the very labor intensive process of their making. The carved marks mirror the rocky crags illustrated in these landscapes; the grain of the wood sometimes playing off the marks and sometimes disappearing into them. Hofshi references both the history of woodcuts as well as apocalyptic landscape as seen in artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Albrecht Dürer.

Hofshi was born in 1959 and lives in Herzliya, Israel. She studied at the Wizo College of Design, Haifa, Israel and Leeds University, United Kingdom, before attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the International Print Center, New York; the Royal Academy of the Arts, London and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. She was included in The Print Center’s 79th Annual International Competition: Printmaking in 2005.
Hofshi’s work will be on view at The Print Center from February 28 to May 17, 2008. The opening reception is Thursday, February 28 from 5:30-7:30pm, with a gallery talk by the artist at 5:00pm. The exhibition is co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel, Philadelphia, as part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel.

Etchings & Drypoints 2005-2008: Bill Scott
February 28 – May 17, 2008

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces Etchings & Drypoints 2005-2008,an exhibition of prints by Philadelphia artist Bill Scott.  The exhibition, which will bring together over a dozen recent prints, is the first devoted to these exceptional works.

Scott is a highly-regarded Philadelphia artist who creates color-based abstract paintings and prints. His influences are both art historical and deeply personal, ranging from Joan Mitchell, who he met in France while on a student traveling grant, to the Impressionist paintings in the Barnes Foundation near his childhood home. Scott’s abstract works are full of references to the real world, with rectangles that recall windows and jagged lines that echo the branches seen from Scott’s studio. In 1999, Scott began making these etchings and drypoints (a printmaking technique in which the image is incised directly into the plate) with Philadelphia-based master printer Cindi R. Ettinger. Since that time Scott has made an extended body of prints, which have grown increasingly complex, with dense markings and beautiful colors.

Scott was born in Bryn Mawr, PA in 1956 and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 2004 he was the recipient of an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts and the Adolph & Clara Obrig Prize from the National Academy Museum, New York.  He received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2006 from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he presently teaches. His work is found in many prestigious public collections including the Delaware Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The State Museum of Pennsylvania and the Woodmere Art Museum. He is represented by Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York and has been the subject of solo exhibitions in London, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Scott’s work will be on view at The Print Center from February 28 to May 17, 2008. The opening reception is Thursday, February 28 from 5:30-7:30pm, with a gallery talk by the artist at 5:00pm.

The Philadelphia Etchings: Janet Towbin
February 28 – May 17, 2008

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces The Philadelphia Etchings,an exhibition of work by artist Janet Towbin.  The exhibition presents an overview of prints made by the artist, who recently moved to Phoenix, AZ, during the eight years she lived in Philadelphia. 

In these etchings, which she made with master printer Cindi R. Ettinger, Towbin finds inspiration in the growth patterns of plants and the movement of wind and water. Their ceaseless, almost obsessive markings seem to mark time and its passing, while their repeating patterns recall textile designs, which Towbin has taught for a number of years. For each of the works in the exhibition, Towbin creates a new solution to abstraction. In some cases the lines become crystallized forms, like responses to some complex algorithm. At other times they verge into chaos, borrowing less from logic and more from intuition. In all of the works we see Towbin’s masterful approach to drawing and line.

Towbin attended the University of Cincinnati and has taught at Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA and Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. She has exhibited nationally including solo exhibitions at the Abington Art Center, Jenkintown, PA; Tadu Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM and Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH. Her work is in several public collections including The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA and Arcadia University, Glenside, PA. She was included in The Print Center’s 81st Annual International Competition: Printmaking in 2007.

Towbin’s work will be on view at The Print Center from February 28 to May 17, 2008. The opening reception is Thursday, February 28 from 5:30-7:30pm, with a gallery talk by the artist at 5:00pm.

Moon Studies and Star Scratches: Sharon Harper

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces Moon Studies and Star Scratches,an exhibition of large-scale photographic works by internationally acclaimed artist Sharon Harper. The works in this series were created with an 8x10 view camera in locations around the world.

Harper uses photography to explore the ways that technology mediates our relationship with the natural world. In the Moon Studies and Star Scratches series, Harper photographed the moon and stars over a period of days, weeks and months on a single sheet of film, both black & white and color. The long exposures capture the movement of celestial objects, rendering them as lines of light and reminding the viewer of the link between the moon and stars and the units we use to measure time and distance. By using the camera as a metaphor for the pervasive presence of technology within the landscape, Harper plays on our conception of photography as providing an objective, virtually scientific representation of the world.

Harper is Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Marcel Sitcoske Gallery, San Francisco; and the Goethe Institute, New York. Her work has been in numerous group exhibitions including: Greater New York, PS1, New York; On Site, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson; and The Print Center’s 80th Annual International Competition: Photography, 2006, for which she received The Print Center Honorary Council’s Award of Excellence. Her work is found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR. She received her MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, New York and a BA from Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, in Literary Studies.

Sharon Harper’s work will be on view at The Print Center from December 6, 2007 to February 16, 2008.  The opening reception is Thursday, December 6 from 5:30-7:30pm.



Dakar Portraits: Vera Viditz-Ward

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces Dakar Portraits,an exhibition of photographs by Pennsylvania photographer Vera Viditz-Ward.  In 1996, Viditz-Ward began an ongoing photographic project investigating urban life in West Africa. The recent works featured in this exhibition are from Dakar, the capital of Senegal and an important political and cultural hub between North Africa and the sub-Saharan countries. The viewer is led through the city - entering homes, glimpsing into businesses and viewing crowds from the window of a taxi. Her portraits can give a sense of disarming intimacy, clearly showing the character and surroundings of the subject. In others, we are blocked from entering these personal worlds by closed doors and crushing crowds.

Viditz-Ward is Professor of Photography at Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA. She has had solo exhibitions at international venues including: The Balch Institute of Ethnic Studies, Philadelphia; The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; the National Museum of Sierra Leone, Freetown, Sierra Leone; and the Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham, England. Her work was included in The Print Center’s 80th Annual International Competition: Photography, 2006 and received The Print Center’s Exhibition Award. Her photographs have appeared in numerous publications, including those of the National Geographic Society, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

Viditz-Ward’s work will be on view at The Print Center from December 6, 2007 to February 16, 2008. The opening reception is Thursday, December 6 from 5:30-7:30pm, with a gallery talk by the artist at 5:00pm.



That’s Women’s Work: Laura Wagner

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces That’s Women’s Work,an exhibition of prints by Philadelphia artist Laura Wagner. The exhibition features two recent series by the artist: Cannibal Debutantes silkscreen prints and mixed-media Barcode Bondage Babies. 

Wagner’s Cannibal Debutantes are inspired by illustrations from 1950s cookbooks. Borrowing the cheerful imagery of happy housewives teaching obedient daughters how to prepare a meal, Wagner has injected them with a macabre humor through the use of dismantled body parts. British critic Ana Finel Honigman wrote, “For these women and girls, the raw meat of human experience and fleshy sensation has been boiled and baked until becoming utterly bland. Biting through the banality, Wagner's sharp, smart imagery reveals the complex humanity buried behind plastic-fantastic images of perfection.” The inventive Barcode Bondage Babies combine woodcut prints with hand stitching.

Wagner was born in Bangkok, Thailand and raised in Nepal, Bangladesh and Michigan. She received her BA in Visual Art from Brown University in 2005 and moved to Philadelphia in fall of that year. Her work has been included in several group exhibitions including those at the Perkins Center for the Arts, Moorestown, NJ, Art in City Hall, Philadelphia and The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA. She was included in The Print Center’s 81st Annual International Competition: Printmaking in 2007 and was the recipient of The Print Center’s Exhibition Award.

Wagner’s work will be on view at The Print Center from December 6, 2007 to February 16, 2008. The opening reception is Thursday, December 6 from 5:30-7:30pm, with a gallery talk by the artist at 5:00pm.

TIME AFTER TIME: COMMUNITY PINHOLE PROJECTS

PHILADELPHIA – The Print Center announces Time after Time: Community Pinhole Projects, an exhibition of photographs created in response to The Print Center’s recent exhibition Taken with Time: a camera obscura projectwhich featured work by Ann Hamilton, Vera Lutter and Abelardo Morell. Time after Time includes photographs made in collaboration with The Print Center’s Artists-in-Schools Program by students at Benjamin Franklin, Frankford, West Philadelphia and William Penn High Schools and CHANCES, an outpatient substance abuse treatment program for women and women with children. The Print Center’s Artists-in-Schools Program brings art education and awareness to underserved young people in The Philadelphia Public School System, while increasing their self esteem and encouraging them to think more expansively about their lives and the world around them.

As part of The Print Center’s Artists-in-Schools Program, coordinated by Tina Zavitsanos, artist educators Simona Josan, Nick Lally, Shalya Marsh and Stacy Treier worked with high school teachers Caroline Allen, Nina Gordon, Robin Lane and Vanessa Marshall to help student artists explore issues of identity and self-representation by producing self-portraits using the camera obscura or pinhole cameras.

Participants in the CHANCES workshops explored self-identity in response to their addiction recovery through art making. The upside-down to right-side up nature of working with the camera obscura or pinhole camera was parallel to the way participant’s lives have been affected by substance abuse and the road to recovery. The Print Center’s collaboration with CHANCES, to provide art education and life management skills, was made possible by a partnership with Art-Reach, a nonprofit organization that joins the performing and visual arts with special needs audiences through organizations serving people with disabilities or economic disadvantages.

The exhibition will be on view August 8 – 18, 2007 with an opening reception Wednesday, August 8 from 5:30 – 7:30pm.

81st ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION: PRINTMAKING

PHILADELPHIA - The Print Center’s 81st Annual International Competition: Printmaking features 44 prints by 42 of the finest contemporary artists from around the world. On Saturday, May 19 juror, Shelley Langdale, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Philadelphia Museum of Art will give a gallery talk in which she will discuss the works included in the exhibition. The award ceremony will immediately follow her talk.

The Print Center’s Annual International Competition is one of the most prestigious exhibitions of its kind and is the oldest juried exhibition for printmaking and photography in the United States. Alternating each year between printmaking and photography, it provides a unique opportunity for local and international artists to compete in a forum which emphasizes individual talent and expressiveness rather than a specific exhibition topic. 

Ms. Langdale reviewed over 1,600 slides submitted by over 400 artists.  “The quantity and diversity of the entries not only affirm the vitality of the medium, but also suggest the ever-expanding role of the print in contemporary art-making strategies” said Ms. Langdale. 

This year’s prize, selected by John Ittmann, Curator of Prints, Philadelphia Museum of Art was awarded to William Smith for Moon-Moonlight, 2005. The Graphic Chemical and Ink Company Purchase Award ($300) for a hand-pulled print was given to Michiko Yamamoto for Untitled woodcut, 2006.

Shelley Langdale selected the following cash and material award recipients: the Jacqueline L. Zemel Prize ($500) Laura Wagner; The Print Center’s Honorary Council Award of Excellence ($500) Ann Johnston-Schuster, given in honor of Charlotte Yudis (1939  - 2007); Honorable Mention ($100) Serena Perrone, given in honor of Shirley Moskowitz Gruber (1920 - 2007); the Art on Paper Award (one year subscription) was awarded to Thomas Stavovy; Renaissance Graphics Award ($50) to Katie Baldwin and the Silicon Gallery Award ($250) to  Kim Baranowski. The Print Center’s Curator, Jacqueline van Rhyn awarded solo exhibitions to Shelley Thorstensen and Laura Wagner. This exhibition will travel to Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences, Loveladies, NJ October 18 – December 3, 2007.

Abu Ghraib Detainee Interview Project: Daniel Heyman

Interview with Daniel Heyman by Joel Rose, WHYY

Weekend America host Alex Cohen
speaks with Daniel Heyman about his work

City Paper interview with Daniel Heyman by Drew Lazor

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces Abu Ghraib Detainee Interview Project by Philadelphia printmaker Daniel Heyman. Heyman was invited to witness interviews conducted by a legal team prosecuting a class action suit on behalf of the former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison in Amman, Jordan and Istanbul, Turkey in 2006. During those proceedings, Heyman created portraits combing the faces of these victims of torture with the text of their testimony.

Most Americans are familiar with the disturbing photographic images from Abu Ghraib in which victims of torture appeared hooded, unclothed and anonymous. In Heyman’s etchings and woodcuts, the detainees’ faces, as well as personal details emerge. Heyman intends these portraits to restore the dignity and individuality of these prisoners in the eyes of the world. Writing on this body of work, Shelley R. Langdale, Associate Curator for Prints and Drawings, Philadelphia Museum of Art states “…rather than portraying the former prisoners in their victimized state, … here Heyman takes advantage of his first-hand experience to focus on them as people. He reclaims their humanity by showing them seated in suits and ties, shirtsleeves or a patterned shawl, as he encountered them when they related their testimony and spoke of their homes, families and friends.”

Daniel Heyman received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Dartmouth College. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group shows and his work is in many public and private collections including the Free Library of Philadelphia, the New York Public Library, and the Yale University Gallery. Heyman currently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and Swarthmore College.

Daniel Heyman’s work will be on view at The Print Center from February 22 – May 5, 2007 and the opening reception is Thursday, February 22 from 5:30-7:30pm, with a gallery talk at 5:00pm.



Books: Photographic Sequences: Ditta Baron Hoeber
February 22 – May 5, 2007

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces Books: Photographic Sequences by Ditta Baron Hoeber. This exhibition presents her artist’s books focusing of artists at work and the spaces in which art making occurs.  She focuses on the specific gestures these individuals make while working, highlighting the qualities of concentration, intention and grace. In each image the people are focused on something just outside the frame, leaving viewers to compose their own stories as they read the book.

Ditta Baron Hoeber attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME and Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA.  Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States including Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, PA; Philadelphia Art Alliance; Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City, MO; Houston Center for Photography; and the State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA.

Ditta Baron Hoeber’s work will be on view at The Print Center from February 22 – May 5, 2007 and the opening reception is Thursday, February 22 from 5:30-7:30pm, with a gallery talk at 5:00pm.

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces Dream,an exhibition of black & white photographs by Philadelphia artist James Stogdill.  The photographs, made in the 18 months after the artist's 40th birthday, tell a story of loss, waiting, family, and the moment when hopefulness begins to feel the first constraints of mortality.  The pictures use the artist as a central figure and take the viewer inside the dreams of a man at the intersection of nostalgia, childhood and love.

The highly constructed nature of these photographs represents a departure for Stogdill whose previous work identified common threads of feeling in pictures made of "found" scenes.  The new use of composed scenes and self-portraiture has given Stogdill an opportunity to offer a narrative with greater intentionality.

Stogdill was one of two photographers awarded a solo exhibition from The Print Center’s 80th Annual International Competition: Photography, juried by Stephen Pinson, Curator, Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. His work has also been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums including: the Perkins Center for the Arts, Moorestown, NJ and the Radnor Arts Center, Radnor, PA.  His work has also been published in Shots Magazine.

James Stogdill’s work will be on view at The Print Center from February 22 – May 5, 2007 and the opening reception is Thursday, February 22 from 5:30-7:30pm, with a gallery talk by the artist at 5:00pm

Prints by New Jersey Artists: 15 Years of the Brodsky Center (formerly Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper)
PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces Prints by New Jersey Artists: 15 Years of the Brodsky Center (formerly Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper) which will show the variety, creativity and exuberance of contemporary printmaking.  The projects are all the work of New Jersey artists who had the opportunity to be in residence at the Brodsky Center, located at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.  The Brodsky Center was established in 1986 by Judith K. Brodsky as an international, national and regional center for leading edge printmaking and papermaking ideas and education, providing outstanding artists in all media who are contributing new narratives to the American cultural mainstream the opportunity to create new work of the highest esthetic and technical distinction in printmaking and papermaking. 

This traveling exhibition celebrates the 100 New Jersey artists who have been in residence from 1987 through 2002.  They were selected by committees composed of curators and artists.  The Print Center will be exhibiting works from 13 of the participating artists, including Carmen Cartiness Johnson, Carson Fox and Gary Petersen, with work ranging from silkscreen to etchings to digital prints.  The work, according to William Zimmer in his New York Times review, is a “rich cultural stew” and that all the works “contribute to the dynamism of the show.

”100 New Jersey Artists will be on view at The Print Center from November 30, 2006 – February 10, 2007.  The exhibition is traveling nationally and internationally for the next three years, including the Tweed Museum at the University of Minnesota; the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, Athens; and will then travel to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.


New Work: Barbara Duval
November 30, 2006 – February 10, 2007
PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center announces New Work: Barbara Duval. This exhibition will focus on etchings Ms. Duval has done over the past few years.  The human figure has always been central to her work, and groupings of figures are of particular importance. Gesture, placement, configuration, as well as the relationship of figures to each other and to their environment provide Ms. Duval with ways in which to question human nature in a broad context.

Ms. Duval received a BFA from Pratt Institute in 1978 and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1982.  Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad, and is included in numerous public and private collections, among them: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Fogg Art Museum, and the Contemporary Art and Culture Center in Osaka, Japan.  She has received numerous awards including a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship in Painting/Graphic Art to Berlin, Germany; a Belgian American Education Foundation Fellowship in Painting/Printmaking to Antwerp, Belgium; two South Carolina Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowships; and two Ford Foundation Grants.  In 2001 she received the College of Charleston’s Distinguished Research Award.  She has been a Professor of Studio Art at the College since 1982.

Barbara Duval’s work will be on exhibit at The Print Center from November 30, 2006 – February 10, 2007 and the opening reception is Thursday, November 30 from 5:30-7:30pm.

Ann Hamilton Photographs in Historic Philadelphia’s Sites, Old Swedes’ Church, Old Saint George’s Church, Free Library, and Carpenters’ Hall for Taken with Time, A Camera Obscura Project.
PHILADELPHIA: Internationally-renowned artist, Ann Hamilton, undertakes a new photography project in preparation of The Print Center’s fall exhibition Taken with Time: A Camera Obscura Project which will also include commissioned work by Vera Lutter and Abelardo Morell.

Taken with Time brings together three internationally recognized contemporary artists in the field of photography who have taken a unique and innovative approach to reviving the magical camera obscura, a simple device for capturing an image. It is a box, sometimes as big as a room, with a hole in one of its walls. Light passing through the hole produces an inverted image of the view outside on the opposite interior wall. The light is very dim inside a camera obscura necessitating a long exposure time to capture the projection. In Taken with Time each of the three invited artists—Ann Hamilton (Columbus, OH), Vera Lutter (New York, NY) and Abelardo Morell (Boston, MA)—has devised his or her distinct method of executing the time-consuming exposures resulting in three images representing Philadelphia’s architectural, social and industrial histories.

Ann Hamilton visited Philadelphia April 29 - May 1 and will return June 11-18 to place pinhole cameras at multiple sites which exemplify Philadelphia’s rich tradition as a political and religious meeting place. Hamilton selected Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Church, Old Saint George’s Church, Free Library and Carpenters’ Hall in Old City, as significant places where Philadelphians have in the past and still continue now to gather. The churches represent the colony’s edict of religious freedom. Old Saint George’s Church is known as ”The Cradle of American Methodism” and Gloria Dei which has been in use since 1700 making it the oldest church building in Pennsylvania and the second oldest in the country. Here, Hamilton will place a set of rectangular cameras on or near the altar and pews to capture the congregation’s movements during the service. The Free Library is a public site where everyone and anyone is welcome to obtain knowledge. Small pinhole cameras will be placed on the balconies of Pepper Hall to record Philadelphians coming together to educate themselves. Carpenters’ Hall was the meeting site of the First Continental Congress in 1774, which had political repercussions leading to the country’s independence. During the first week of the opening, Hamilton will place a circa 1800’s round table in the center and invite visitors to read in unison a historical text. Their joint effort will be recorded with a round pinhole camera with multiple apertures custom made for the table.

The exhibition is scheduled for September 7 – November 11, 2006 and is curated by Jacqueline van Rhyn, Curator of Prints and Photographs at The Print Center. Taken with Time is made possible by the Philadelphia Exhibition Initiative, a granting program of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

Vera Lutter’s Camera Obscura at 30th Street Station
for TAKEN WITH TIME, A Camera Obscura Project
PHILADELPHIA: Internationally renowned artist, Vera Lutter, undertakes a new photography project in preparation of The Print Center’s fall exhibition TAKEN WITH TIME: A Camera Obscura Project which will also include commissioned work by Ann Hamilton and Abelardo Morell. TAKEN WITH TIME brings together three internationally recognized contemporary artists in the field of photography who have taken a unique and innovative approach to reviving the magical camera obscura, a simple device for capturing an image. It is a box, sometimes as big as a room, with a hole in one of its walls. Light passing through the hole produces an inverted image of the view outside on the opposite interior wall. The light is very dim inside a camera obscura necessitating a long exposure time to capture the projection. In TAKEN WITH TIME each of the three invited artists—Ann Hamilton (Columbus, OH), Vera Lutter (New York, NY) and Abelardo Morell (Boston, MA)—has devised his or her distinct method of executing the time-consuming exposures resulting in three images representing Philadelphia’s architectural, social and industrial histories.

Vera Lutter, with the help of The Print Center and Amtrak, will create a shipping-container sized camera obscura, which will be placed on the northwest corner of the second floor of the Amtrak parking garage at 30th Street Station. This site affords a west view overlooking the rail yard, a rail bridge, and Amtrak’s abandoned steam plant. Lutter will capture her image directly on photographic paper, not on negative film, making a series of unique photographs. Weather permitting; the exposure will take place during the second and third weeks of April.

Lutter will use Amtrak’s Acela Express to travel daily between her studio in New York and the camera obscura in Philadelphia. Each morning she will ‘load’ photographic paper onto the back wall of her camera obscura. The total time of the exposure will depend on the intensity of the daylight, from a few hours on a bright sunny day to possibly even 2 days of dreary overcast. After the exposure is completed, Lutter will pack the exposed paper in a light-tight tube and return to her studio in New York. There she will develop the image in her custom-made darkroom where she can easily process the over-sized photographic paper. The final images will depict the sites with great factuality but also have a ghost like appearance. Lutter’s ghostly representation of an industrial site will encapsulate Philadelphia’s once flourishing industrial age.

The exhibition is scheduled for September 7 – November 11, 2006 and is curated by Jacqueline van Rhyn, Curator of Prints and Photographs at The Print Center. Vera Lutter will give an artist lecture at the University of Pennsylvania on October 23rd at 5:00 pm. TAKEN WITH TIME is made possible by the Philadelphia Exhibition Initiative, a grant program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

TAKEN WITH TIME, a Camera Obscura Project in Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center, a nonprofit gallery continuing its 91 year mission to support printmaking and photography, announces the opening of its Fall 2006 exhibition, TAKEN WITH TIME: A Camera Obscura Project.
TAKEN WITH TIME brings together three internationally recognized contemporary artists in the field of photography who have taken a unique and innovative approach to reviving the magical camera obscura. The camera obscura is a simple device for capturing an image. It is a box, sometimes as big as a room, with a hole in one of its walls. Light passing through the hole produces an inverted image on the opposite interior wall of the view outside. The light is very dim inside a camera obscura necessitating a long exposure time to capture the projection. In TAKEN WITH TIME each of the three invited artists—Ann Hamilton (Columbus, OH), Vera Lutter (New York, NY) and Abelardo Morell (Boston, MA)—has devised his or her distinct method of executing the time-consuming exposures resulting in three images representing Philadelphia’s architectural, social and industrial histories.

Abelardo Morell converted Gallery 171 in the Modern and Contemporary wing of The Philadelphia Museum of Art into a giant camera obscura. Through a small hole in one of the gallery’s clerestory windows, Morell projected the corner of the museum’s West Entrance onto Giorgio de Chirico’s painting The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913) hung on the opposite gallery wall. Morell captured the projected image of the museum with three 4x5 cameras, one filled with color film which was a first for Morell. This color image has revitalized Morell’s series for the camera obscura, which prior to his work with TAKEN WITH TIME was coming to a close. Instead, this image has become the first of a new series of color camera obscura photographs.

Vera Lutter, with the help of The Print Center and Amtrak, will create a shipping-container sized camera obscura, which will be placed on the northwest corner of the second floor of the Amtrak parking garage at 30th Street Station. This site affords a west view overlooking the rail yard, a rail bridge and Amtrak’s abandoned steam heating plant. Lutter will capture her image directly on photographic paper, not on negative film, making her photograph one-of-a-kind. Weather permitting; the exposure will take place during the second week of April.

Ann Hamilton’s cameras are miniature in size compared to those of Abelardo Morell and Vera Lutter. The artist has selected three different sites. The first will capture visitors to Carpenter’s Hall in Old City who will be invited to gather around a circa 1800’s round table for the duration of the exposure. The second will be set in front of a congregation at a Philadelphia church, temple or meeting house to capture the congregation’s movement or lack there of during the mass, Shabbat or meeting. The third camera will be placed in the center of a group meeting in a location specifically used for a gathering. Ann Hamilton is scheduled to begin photographing the last weekend of April 2006.

The exhibition is scheduled for September 7 – November 11, 2006 and is curated by Jacqueline van Rhyn, Curator of Prints and Photographs at The Print Center. TAKEN WITH TIME is made possible by the Philadelphia Exhibition Initiative, a grant program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts, Philadelphia.


Diamonds are Forever: Edna Andrade
March 16 – May 27, 2006
PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center is proud to present a body of work barely seen in Philadelphia: Edna Andrade’s prints from the 1960’s and 1970’s. At the forefront of the op art movement, Andrade’s paintings meticulously handpainted hard-edged geometric patterns are perfected in her prints. The margin of error was much less forgiving in screenprinting and lithography, demanding exactness and patience from both the artist and the master printer. Most of her prints are made up of a single geometric shape reiterated over and over leading to a dynamic, pulsating composition. Her prints unsettle the eye and sometimes induce a mild sensory experience for the viewer. Andrade was drawn to printmaking as a medium to make her work more accessible and create as wide an audience as possible, regardless of the person’s art education. The immediacy of her work does not require an explanation. “People don’t have to be aesthetes in order to understand it [her art];” Andrade explains, in the ICA’s exhibition catalog, “It has a direct visual-emotional impact.”

The exhibition at The Print Center also includes a few prints Andrade made at the Tamarind Institute after it moved to New Mexico in 1970. The influence and impression of the vast open land and the desert colors are prominent in Andrade’s prints. Although still playing with optical geometric forms, the compositions are more organic making direct reference to the land and her experience of the non-urban landscape.

What is most surprising, Andrade’s prints from the 1960’s and 1970’s are contemporary. Distinctly made and 30-40 years ago, they share the ideas with which and the contexts in which art is perceived today—the interchange between art, architecture and design. At the young age of 89 years old Andrade has her style come into prominence, fall out of favor only to become the focus of a new generation of art in the beginning of the 21st century.

Edna Andrade, born in 1917 in Portsmouth, VA, is based in Philadelphia and represented by Locks Gallery. She graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1938. Throughout her career she has exhibited at numerous national and international venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania (2003), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1993-4), Amerika Haus, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich, Germany (1985), Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (1979), Philadelphia Museum of Art (1973-4), Brooklyn Museum of Art (1971) and Philadelphia Art Alliance (1965).

The Guides: Justyna Badach
March 16 – May 27, 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Artist Talks: 5:00 p.m. and Opening Reception: 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
PHILADELPHIA: This new series of photographs by Philadelphia resident Justyna Badach presents several changes in her work. To begin, it marks her return to color photographs after having printed digitally since 1999 and despite her allergic reaction to the chemicals. Tired of the computer screen, Badach missed the hands-on process in the darkroom. Secondly, and more importantly, Badach reintroduces people into her photographs. Her previous work almost exclusively dealt with the landscape imbued with cultural dislocation and personal isolation. On the contrary, in The Guides the human figure is the subject matter and the focus of our attention while the architectural background becomes almost unnecessary. In this series, Badach reverts to street photography with the interest to merge the distance of the stranger and the proximity, or intimacy, of the photograph into one image. Her subject is the tourist and the tour guide; the latter purposely making him- or herself stand out from the group by the choice of majestic or whimsical flag, umbrella or staff. The tourists appear to blend in with the group or attempt to appear as inconspicuous as possible. As the artist notes, the guided tour gives the visitor a chance of being an insider, to have access to information and sights unavailable to those who do not participate. At the same time, being in a group of people all holding or wearing cameras and guided by a person holding an umbrella or something of the sort, is itself highly visible. Badach’s series The Guides, repetitive in form and composition, depicts the tourist’s desire to blend into and gain access to a new culture and yet their photographs of this new place will all be similar, capturing all the same sites.

Justyna Badach is currently Associate Professor of Photography at University of Delaware, previously teaching at Drexel University since 2000. She received her MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1998 and has been awarded most recently a Leeway Foundation Special Opportunity Grant (2004) and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts S.O.S. Grant (2003). Her solo exhibitions include the Philadelphia International Airport (2004) and Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University (2005). Her photographs have been included in several group exhibitions at Vox Populi Gallery (2005), Studio Thomas Kellner, Germany (2005), Main Line Art Center (2003) and White Columns, New York (2001).

Short Stories: A Narrative in Mezzotint, Art Werger
March 16 – May 27, 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Artist Talks: 5:00 p.m. and Opening Reception: 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
PHILADELPHIA: Art Werger from Athens, OH has worked almost exclusively with intaglio printmaking for the last 25 years. Moreover, he has mastered and is one a few contemporary printmakers who uses the labor intensive print process, mezzotint, a process for which you first create a black surface and then burnish, scrape or scribe a white image out of it, the reverse for a typical print process. In this exhibition, Werger presents over 200 three inch squared black and white mezzotints with aquatint laid out in a crossword grid on the wall. Each image captures a single moment, a snippet of a larger action. Yet presented as a group, they together create visual and narrative connections. Werger refers to these groups as having a cinematic quality, capturing single moments within a larger continuous motion. But this continuous motion remains unfixed as the grid format can be shuffled into a new and different presentation. The grid format also engages the viewer to create her own narrative out of the abstracted images. In this series, Werger collapses concepts of time and space letting them be formed and read differently by each viewer.

Art Werger is currently Professor of Printmaking at Ohio University, Athens. He has exhibited his work extensively in solo and group exhibitions at national and international venues including the Davidson Gallery, Seattle, WA; The Japan Foundation, Tokyo; Culture Centers throughout Poland; Contemporary Museum of Atlanta, GA; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; and Fanny Garver Gallery, Madison, WI. He has been awarded hundreds of prizes including three from The Print Center Annual Competitions in 2005, 2003 and 1988. His prints can be seen in over 50 public collections including the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Print Center Receives Grant from Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative
$150,000 Towards Camera Obscura Project, TAKEN WITH TIME

PHILADELPHIA: The Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative (PEI), funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts, announced the 2005 awardees in April. The Print Center was one of four Philadelphia institutions selected, including the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Moore College of Art and Design and the Institute of Contemporary Art. The Print Center received $150,000 for the exhibition TAKEN WITH TIME.

TAKEN WITH TIME brings together for the first time, three contemporary artists of international significance in the field of photography who have each taken different and innovative approach to reviving the camera obscura—the oldest and simplest photographic device. Ann Hamilton (Columbus, OH), Vera Lutter (New York, NY) and Abelardo Morell (Boston, MA) will temporarily install camera obscurae in different Philadelphia locations and will present the final images in an exhibition at The Print Center. The new work will be exhibited at The Print Center and documented in an accompanying catalog. Related outreach programming will illuminate the project and the magic of the camera obscura to targeted audiences. A planning grant that was awarded in 2004 by PEI offered the opportunity to invite each artist to spend two weeks in Philadelphia. At that time they conducted research and explored the city to determine the site for their camera obscura. The second part of the planning grant also supported hiring a project manager and art education coordinator to make contact with the community of each selected site and to begin formulating outreach programs based around the construction and use of each camera.

TAKEN WITH TIME will present three different uses of the camera obscura to address how we perceive light, observe space and experience time. The site specificity of each camera obscura’s location will be significant in the context of Philadelphia reflecting on its communities, history, architecture and cultural wealth. Morell will turn a gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art into a camera, Lutter will place her camera which is the size of a shipping container on a rail platform, while Hamilton’s portable pinhole camera will sit in the center of various types of gatherings in the city.

The exhibition is currently scheduled for September 7 - November 8, 2006 and will be curated by Jacqueline van Rhyn, Curator of Prints and Photographs at The Print Center. Ms. van Rhyn co-curated The Print Center’s recently funded PEI exhibition, IMPRINT, a public art project, which placed the work of six artists on billboards, coffee cups and newspapers throughout the city.  

Sun Pictures and Other Broken Images: Richard Torchia
December 1, 2005 – March 4, 2006
PHILADELPHIA: Not a single printed image is presented in Richard Torchia’s photographic installation. Instead, The Print Center’s second floor galleries are filled with ephemeral images made by capturing and redirecting various lights sources—the sun, a candle or an electric light—through a lens or perforated material to create a projected image. Torchia’s site specific installation transforms the space into the camera in which visitors experience the photographic image in process. Depending on its light source, the image is always changing, defying the photograph as a single fixed image. Torchia, who does not want to add more images to an already visually full world, presents ephemeral “unfixed” images that do not commit to a decisive moment. Rather they are in constant flux depicting a singular image in multiple ways. Torchia raises the question; does an image have to be fixed to be replicated? As the final exhibition of The Print Center’s 90th Anniversary Year, Sun Pictures and Other Broken Images brings together three decisive moments in the history of the printed image: printmakers use of the camera obscura, photographers’ struggles to fix the image inside the camera, and the revival of the oldest photographic technique in era dominated by the digital image and its capability to have unlimited reproductions.

Richard Torchia is based in Philadelphia, currently teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and is Director of the Art Gallery at Arcadia University. Torchia was awarded a Pew Fellowships in the Arts the first year it was offered in 1994 and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in 1999. Torchia has presented his site-specific installations at the Morris Arboretum at the University of Pennsylvania (2002-2005), at Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia (1997-2001), and as part of the group exhibition Points of Departure, Art on the Line in Philadelphia (2000-2001). Torchia is currently installing a permanent installation at the Hilton Garden Inn as part of the Percent for Art Project commissioned by the Redevelopment Authority of Pennsylvania. Torchia is also represented in several public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Prudential Life Insurance Company and the Franklin Furnace Archives, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

On My Own: Recent Philadelphia Graduates
Craig Mateyunas, Althea Murphy-Price, Zoe Soslow and Sarah Stolfa
December 1, 2005 – March 4, 2006
PHILADELPHIA: At the closure of The Print Center’s 90th anniversary year, this exhibition looks toward the promises of the next generation. On My Own presents four artists who graduated from four different bachelor and master of fine arts programs in Philadelphia this spring: Craig Mateyunas (MFA, University of Pennsylvania), Althea Murphy-Price (MFA, Tyler School of Art, Temple University), Zoe Soslow (BS, The University of the Arts) and Sarah Stolfa (BS, Drexel University). What ties this selection of prints and photographs together are the artists’ responses to their immediate environment or personal experiences. Craig Mateyunas, trained as a painter during his undergraduate studies, discovered photography in graduate school and fell in love with its ability to give an unmediated record of its subject. Mateyunas’ discovery of photography coincided with his coming out. Turning the camera onto his naked body, Mateyunas re-discovered his body through the camera’s ‘objective’ lens. Similarly, Althea Murphy-Price explores issues of the self within a social community. Using synthetic hair in her screenprints, she addresses how hair is an essential expression of beauty for the African-American woman and how beauty salons play a significant role in their community. Sarah Stolfa documents another social meeting place, McGlinchey’s Bar in this case, where she has worked for the last eight years. All her subjects have come to the bar by themselves. Their body language expresses the conflict of being alone and the desire for companionship while being conscious of maintaining a personal dignity. The protection of the self is critical for the subjects in Zoe Soslow’s lithographs which were made in response to her experience at a mental hospital for prisoners of maximum security. Her white on white prints represent the patients’ needs to share feelings and thoughts with others but at the same time protect their only private possession of their incarcerated lives.

The Print Center’s 90th Anniversary Exhibition, 90 Years: Nurturing the New will open with a stellar gala opening on September 8, 2005. The 90th Anniversary Exhibition will be a retrospective utilizing key works from our collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art together with photographs and prints from exclusive private collections from the Mid-Atlantic region.
Divided into ten year segments, from 1915 - 2005, the exhibition will explore key developments in printmaking and photography and relate them to The Print Center's role in nurturing these developments during the same period. Artists include Ansel Adams, Edna Andrade, Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Morris Blackburn, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Warrington Colescott, Imogen Cunningham, Lesley Dill, Walker Evans, Allan Freelon, Leon Golub, Emmet Gowin, Red Grooms, Stanley William Hayter, David Hockney, Earl Horter, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Misch Kohn, Sam Maitin, Ray Metzker, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Ben Shahn, Art Spiegelman, Benton Spruance, Maggie Taylor, Ruth Thorne-Thompson, Dox Thrash and many more. An exhibition catalog will be available and provide background to The Print Center’s extensive ninety year history of nurturing the new.

Founded in 1915 as The Print Club, this extraordinary small gem of a Philadelphia arts organization, has maintained a clear focus on printmaking and photography which has made it a national and international nexus for printmakers, photographers, collectors, educators and artists of all disciplines. Our mission is to support printmaking and photography as vital contemporary arts and encourage the appreciation of the printed image in all its forms. In 1942 The Print Center donated its collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to form the foundation for its Print Department. In 1996, The Print Club changed its name to The Print Center to mark its commitment to serve both its members and the community.

The Print Center is one of only a few organizations, and certainly, at ninety, one of the most long-lived, who have dedicated themselves to the promotion of printmaking and photography two of the most democratic and collaborative disciplines of artistic endeavor. Since its inception, The Print Center has been encouraging new artists, new work, new processes and new collectors and continues this important work as it progresses to its 100th Anniversary in 2015.

A stellar gala will mark the opening of the 90th Anniversary exhibition on Thursday, September 8, 2005. The dazzling opening reception at The Print Center’s charming Rittenhouse Square carriage house will begin at 5:00 p.m. with a cocktail reception and a private tour led by John Ittmann, Curator of Prints, Philadelphia Museum of Art. At 7:00 p.m. The Print Center will open its doors to the general public. The celebrations will continue until 9:00 p.m. Tickets start at $90 to attend to the cocktail reception and private tour. For $180 per individual/$270 per couple guests will receive a limited edition 90th Anniversary print by Philadelphia artist, Charles Burwell.

Abelardo Morell, Internationally Known Photographer, will be producing work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art This August for The Print Center’s Camera Obscura Project, TAKEN WITH TIME

PHILADELPHIA: TAKEN WITH TIME brings together for the first time, three contemporary artists of international significance in the field of photography who have each taken different and innovative approach to reviving the camera obscura—the oldest and simplest photographic device. Ann Hamilton (Columbus, OH), Vera Lutter (New York, NY) and Abelardo Morell (Boston, MA) will temporarily install camera obscurae in different Philadelphia locations and will present the final images in an exhibition at The Print Center. Through a $150,000 grant given by Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a grant program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, the new work will be exhibited at The Print Center and documented in an accompanying catalog. Related outreach programming will illuminate the project and the magic of the camera obscura to targeted audiences.

TAKEN WITH TIME will present three different uses of the camera obscura to address how we perceive light, observe space and experience time. The site specificity of each camera obscura’s location will be significant in the context of Philadelphia reflecting on its communities, history, architecture and cultural wealth.

Abelardo Morell will be converting gallery no. 169 in the Modern and Contemporary wing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art into a giant camera obscura. Through one of the gallery’s clerestory windows, he will project the corner of the museum’s east entrance onto the gallery’s north east corner where on each wall hangs Fernand Léger’s The City (Fragment, Third State), (1919) and The City, (1919). Morell will set up three 4 x 5 format cameras to photograph the inverted museum entrance projected on the paintings and the corner of the gallery. The exterior image is unaltered and unabridged when brought inside but through being inverted, the image is wrenched out of context. The photographs will be taken August 6 – 10, 2005. Rain dates are August 13 – 17 or August 20 - 24.

Vera Lutter will place her camera which is the size of a shipping container on a rail platform, while Ann Hamilton’s portable pinhole camera will sit in the center of various types of gatherings in the city. Dates and specific locations for Lutter and Hamilton’s projects will soon be announced. The exhibition is scheduled for September 7 - November 8, 2006.

Recent Prints: Elizabeth Osborne
May 19 – July 23, 2005
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 19, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk by the Artist: Thursday, May 19, 5:00 p.m.

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center presents the inaugural exhibition of prints by Elizabeth Osborne. In her 40 year career, this is her first opportunity to have an exhibition dedicated to her prints. Based in Philadelphia and primarily known as a painter, Osborne has been making prints as long as she has painted. This exhibition focuses on work created in the last five years, all of which will be on view for the first time. Her prints engage in the same themes as her paintings: still-life, landscapes and interiors. Osborne translates her visual responses to her experiences and surroundings into a composition of broad horizontal bands of color with simplified almost abstracted shapes. Details are indicated with nuanced strokes providing the essential information. With her great sense of color and quick lines, each print captures the essence of the moment: a balmy July day; an icy clear blue sky; or the calming radiance of light pouring through a window. Osborne’s prints, both interior and exterior compositions, capture the serenity and beauty of our world.
To celebrate the inaugural exhibition, The Print Center will publish an accompanying catalog with an essay by Jacqueline van Rhyn, Curator of Prints and Photographs of The Print Center. This catalog will not only document and highlight a selection of Osborne’s most notable prints but will also be an elegant medium to make her prints readily available to a larger audience.
Elizabeth Osborne’s exhibition is presented as part of The Print Center 90th Anniversary which celebrates the organization’s 90 years of nurturing new artists, new techniques and new work; the latter exemplified by Osborne’s exhibition. Ms. Osborne has been a long time supporter of The Print Center. Along with regularly submitting work to our annual auctions, she participated in our 65th Anniversary publication, The Philadelphia Portfolio, 1980, which also included commissioned prints by other Philadelphia artists, Edna Andrade, John Dowell and Peter Paone. The opening reception for this exhibition will celebrate both Osborne’s prints and The Print Center’s 90 years of encouraging the appreciation of the printed image.

79th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION: PRINTMAKING
May 21 – July 23, 2005

Opening Reception and Gallery Talk by the Juror:
Saturday, May 21, 2005, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Juried by Judith Hecker, Assistant Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, Museum of Modern Art, NY

PHILADELPHIA - The Print Center’s 79th Annual International Competition: Printmaking features 40 prints by 35 of the finest contemporary artists from around the world. On Saturday, May 21 juror, Judith Hecker, Assistant Curator of Prints, Museum of Modern Art, New York will give a gallery talk in which she will discuss the works included in the exhibition. The award ceremony and opening reception will immediately follow her talk. The Print Center’s Annual International Competition is one of the most prestigious exhibitions of its kind and is the oldest juried exhibition for printmaking and photography in the United States. Alternating each year between printmaking and photography, it provides a unique opportunity for local and international artists to compete in a forum which emphasizes individual talent and expressiveness rather than a specific exhibition topic.

Ms. Hecker reviewed over 1,200 slides submitted by 312 artists. “The remarkably varied and often inventive group…suggests the continued, perhaps increasing, vitality of the print medium today—its specialized nature as well as its broader relevance to fine art and contemporary culture,” said Ms. Hecker.

Among the awards given this year will include: The Print Center Honorary Council Award of Excellence ($500) awarded to František Blažo; Jacqueline L. Zemel Cash Award ($500) awarded to Susannah Bielak; The Print Center Selection awards were given to Art Werger and Barbara Duval for solo exhibitions. The Print Center Honorable Mention ($100) awarded to Doris Eisen; and John Ittmann, Curator of Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be selecting one print for inclusion in The Print Center Permanent Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This exhibition will travel to Long Beach Island Foundation of Arts and Sciences, Loveladies, NJ September 11 – November 11, 2005.

90 Years: Nurturing the New
The Print Center’s 90th Anniversary Exhibition and Opening Gala
Thursday, September 8, 2005, 5:00 – 9:00 p.m.

PHILADELPHIA: A stellar gala event will mark the opening of The Print Center’s 90th Anniversary Exhibition, 90 Years: Nurturing the New on September 8, 2005. The 90th Anniversary Exhibition will be a retrospective utilizing key works from our collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art including Picasso, Rauschenberg and Baskin prints and together with photographs and prints from exclusive private collections along the East Coast. Divided into ten year segments, from 1915 - 2005, the exhibition will explore key developments in printmaking and photography and relate them to The Print Center's role in nurturing these developments during the same period. An exhibition catalog will be available and provide more extensive history on The Print Center’s ninety years of nurturing the new. With a private tour given by a notable curator, the dazzling opening reception, at The Print Center’s charming Rittenhouse Square carriage house, will begin at 5:00 p.m. with a spectacular cocktail reception. A solo flutist, William McKenty, will serenade the assembled guests. At 7:00 p.m. The Print Center will open its doors to the general public. The celebrations will continue until 9:00 p.m. Tickets start at $90 to attend to the cocktail reception and the private tour. For $180 per individual/$270 per couple guests will receive a limited edition 90th Anniversary print.

Founded in 1915 as The Print Club, this extraordinary small gem of a Philadelphia arts organization, has maintained a clear focus on printmaking and photography which has made it a national and international nexus for printmakers, photographers, collectors, educators and artists of all disciplines. Our mission is to support printmaking and photography as vital contemporary arts and encourage the appreciation of the printed image in all its forms. The Print Center is one of only a few organizations, and certainly, at ninety, one of the most long-lived, who have dedicated themselves to the promotion of printmaking and photography two of the most democratic and collaborative disciplines of artistic endeavor. From the beginning, The Print Center has been encouraging new artists, new processes and new collectors and continues to do so with great enthusiasm.

1n 1942 The Print Center donated its collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to form the foundation for its Print Department. Exhibitions have featured work by local and international artists alike such as; Mary Cassatt, Pablo Picasso, Dox Thrash, Jasper Johns, Ansel Adams, Art Spiegelman, and more recently Kara Walker, Jerry Uelsmann, Nancy Spero, Leon Golub, Dotty Attie, John Coplans and Red Grooms. In 1996, The Print Club changed its name to The Print Center to mark its commitment to serve both its members and the community.

Camouflage: Carl Fudge
March 4 – May 7, 2005
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 10, 2005, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Artist Lecture: Wednesday, April 6, 11:15 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., President’s Hall, Tyler School of Art. Sponsored by the Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture, Tyler School of Art.

Patron Party: A Private Evening with Carl Fudge, April 7 at 6:00 p.m. at The Print Center

PHILADELPHIA: Carl Fudge’s work involves the intersection of old and new printmaking technologies. Many of his prints are complex digital reworkings of master prints and contemporary popular images. The selection of prints on view at The Print Center are based on Andy Warhol’s “Camouflage Paintings” which Fudge has recombined in the computer and then printed using small hand silkscreens. Warhol’s series, painted in the last ten years of his life and also made into a series of prints, are abstract in appearance and were deliberately made as parodies of the history of abstract or “modernist” painting. Fudge takes Warhol’s irony one step further by scanning a reproduction of Warhol’s image and then using digital technology as an intermediary step, to rework every inch of the scanned image into his own abstract composition that becomes the model for a meticulously executed screenprint. Fudge’s prints, each an abstraction of an abstraction, blur the boundaries between original and reproduction.
Carl Fudge, born in England, is based in New York and currently teaches at Columbia University. In 1990 he received his MFA from Tyler School of Art and is one of the very few artists whose work was purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art while still a student. Fudge has exhibited at numerous national and international venues including Ronald Feldman Gallery, Locks Gallery (1993), The Fabric Workshop and Museum (1991), Whitney Museum of American Art (2001), Brooklyn Museum of Art (2001) and Banff Center for the Arts (2000). Fudge’s work has been published in exhibition catalogs and publications, and has received critical acclaim in Artforum, Art on Paper and The New York Times. His prints and paintings can be found in many public collections including Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Denver Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art.
Carl Fudge will be speaking at Tyler School of Art on Wednesday, April 6 at 11:15am. This lecture is free and open to the public. Mr. Fudge is also The Print Center’s 2005 Patron Party artist. He will give a private champagne tour of his exhibition and then go to the home of Print Center Board Member E. Tama Williams for a private dinner with the artist. Prices range from $100-$600 depending on level of support.


New Work: Keith Johnson

March 4 – May 7, 2005
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 10, 2005, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Gallery Talk by the Artist: Thursday, March 10, 5:00 p.m. at The Print Center

Artist Lecture, Wednesday, April 13, 1:15-2:00 p.m., Hunt Room, Dorrance Hamilton Hall, The University of the Arts, 320 S. Broad Street, a Paradigm Lecture Series sponsored by the Media Arts Department, The University of the Arts.

PHILADELPHIA: Keith Johnson new work is about how we use and claim the land that defines our space and place. Having spent the past number of years on the road photographing the cultural and social landscape, Johnson is tuned to the in congruencies of our environment and intrigued by them as the same time. He is lured into the piles of clay, fishing net or algae on a pond, those things most of us pass by without even recognizing let alone to be items of intrigue. Johnson’s photographs record the found items which have stopped him in his tracks. But it is not until in the darkroom Johnson discovers the beauty and a new fascination for the odd curiosity found on the side of the road. New Work presents selections of three bodies of work which make the viewer think about the surface and texture of the banalities in our world. The images are often difficult to discern and dissolve into landscapes of abstract forms and shapes. In the end, Johnson wants us to share and experience the sense of discovery of taking the photographs and seeing the banalities of our world anew.
Keith Johnson is based outside of New Haven, CT. He received his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Johnson has received several awards and grants including most recently a residence at Light Work in Syracuse, NY and a Fellowship at Silver Eye Center in Pittsburgh, PA. His photographs can be found in several collections George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ and New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA. Johnson has exhibited his work extensively throughout the United States including the Sol Mednick Gallery at The University of the Arts and the Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA.
Keith Johnson will be giving a gallery talk at The Print Center with fellow exhibiting photographer, Phil Marquez on March 10 at 5:00pm. Mr. Johnson will also be giving a lecture on Wednesday, April 13 at 1:15-2:00 p.m. at The University of the Arts, 320 S. Broad Street. Both lectures are free and open to the public.


The Suburban Landscape: Phil Marquez

March 4 – May 7, 2005
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 10, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Gallery Talk by the Artist: Thursday, March 10, 5:00 p.m.

PHILADELPHIA: Phil Marquez is interested in the landscape found in middle-class America suburbia and focuses his camera unemotionally and directly onto the ‘natural’ environment of the suburban landscape. Fascinated by our need to control the environment, Marquez photographs all areas of suburban architecture and urban planning where all natural forms have been stripped away. What is left is an artificial environment. Through his straight-forward approach, Marquez remarks on the irony of people’s motivation to move out to the suburbs—to live closer and within a natural environment—to only in the end control it and make it artificial. Plants are imported, tamed and biogenetically altered to accommodate the suburbanites’ needs and desires for a more accommodating vegetation which requires little work. Marquez’s images reflect the mundane of these carefully planned and altered landscapes.
Phil Marquez is based in Placentia, CA, he received his MFA at Claremont Graduate University in 2002 and his BA from California State University at Fullerton in 1999. He has exhibited at numerous venues including Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA; New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts, Summit, NJ; and Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach, CA. Marquez currently an Adjunct Professor of Photography at Santa Ana College, Santa Ana, CA and Long Beach City College, Long Beach, CA and also a Visiting Professor of Photography at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA and Soka University, Aliso Viejo, CA.
Phil Marquez will be giving a gallery talk at The Print Center with fellow exhibiting photographer, Keith Johnson on March 10 at 5:00pm. The gallery talk is free and open to the public.

9 x 9: New Prints by Mid Atlantic Arts
Foundation Creative Fellows 2003

December 2, 2004 – February 19, 2005

PHILADELPHIA: 9x9 features the work of nine artists who participated in the Creative Fellowships Program in Printmaking of the Mid Atlantic Art Foundation. Nine host organizations were invited to form a collaborative partnership with the Foundation to select an artist from its member states to receive a fellowship. The selected artists received a stipend, materials allowance, and subsidized housing and travel for their printmaking project. The host facility provided technical support and expertise in producing the new works. The artists had access to space, equipment and technical support, and uninterrupted studio time to create new works of art which are presented in this exhibition.

In the spring of 2003, The Print Center was a host organization in collaboration with Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper and selected Kenneth Jones, Newark, DE, to receive the MAAF Creative Fellowship in Printmaking. Jones created the series Beginnings which includes six digital prints. In each print, Jones begins with a cut engraving plate taken from a defunct Vandercook letterpress machine. Through the use of digital manipulation, Jones was able to detach the engraved cut plate from its traditional role and redefine it: that is the plate became less physical and more immaterial.

Jones received a BA in Communication and Photography and his MFA from the University of Delaware. He was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship in Photography in 1997 by the Delaware State Arts Council and is currently on the faculty of Harford Community College in Maryland.

The other eight hosts for the fellowships were Artists Image Resource, Pittsburgh; Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia, PA; Pyramid Atlantic, Riverdale, MD; University of Richmond, Richmond, VA; The Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY; West Virginia University, College of Creative Arts, Morgantown, WV; and Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. In addition to Kenneth Jones, the participating artists are La Vaughn Belle (St. Croix, Virgin Islands), Chakaia Booker (New York, NY), Claudia Giannini (Morgantown, WV), Michael Iacovone (Washington, DC), Anne Iott (Virginia Beach, VA), Ayanah Moor (Pittsburgh, PA), and Jon Rappleye (Jersey City, NJ) and Ann Rentschler (Baltimore, MD).

Printmaking techniques represented in the exhibition include lithography, intaglio, and screenprinting, as well as artists’ books, and two- and three-dimensional assemblages. Kenneth Jones will be giving a tour of his coinciding solo exhibition of new work at The Print Center on Thursday, December 2 at 5:00 p.m.

Charmed: Susan Dunkerley
December 2, 2004 – February 19, 2005

PHILADELPHIA: Susan Dunkerley’s solo exhibition, Charmed, presents enchanted still-lifes. Each photograph is a compilation of items gathered from her tending in the backyard and in the kitchen. Dunkerley sets up the still-lifes by using a variety of remnants: uprooted sprouts, peelings, trimmings and prunings. She combines these with common domestic items associated with woman’s work including of a pair of scissors, a broken piece of china, a fork and a female figurine. Each still-life exists only temporarily. It is constructed right in front of the studio window. The daylight, or lack thereof, illuminates the scene from behind. Dunkerley watches the daylight change the composition’s tonal values until it has the perfect balance between the bright lights and dark shadows. She then clicks the shutter and dissembles the still-life. What remains is both a documentation of the moment and more importantly, an image which opens us up to a new world and puts our imagination into motion.

Susan Dunkerley received her MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1990 and is currently an Associate Professor in the art department at Baylor University in Waco, TX. Her photographs have been published and exhibited nationally and in Europe. She has received numerous awards including a Fellowship from Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA in 2001 and a 2002 Carol Crow Memorial Fellowship Award from the Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX. Her photographs are can be found in many private and public collections including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The Disconnected Dislocation Dilemma: Kenneth Jones
December 2, 2004 – February 19, 2005

PHILADELPHIA: Kenneth Jones’s solo exhibition titled, The Disconnected Dislocation Dilemma, is both aurally as well as visually a collision of excessiveness. But like the title which can be mastered with practice and by saying it slowly, the images too can be deciphered, navigated, and understood.

Each image is a frozen moment of an accumulated frenzied activity on a computer desktop. Countless windows opened, piled over each other, revealing and hiding plenty of information. Nothing is complete, everything is in-progress and maybe even perpetually undone. The images are filled with anxiety of the unresolved. However, assuming this cacophony of silent messages is orchestrated by one user, we desperately search to find a narrative. Yet for Jones it is not the distillation of these images rather the collection of them that is important. Each final digital print reflects our daily encounters with a mania of pictures many of which, as in Jones’ work, we either register, process, or just simply ignore.

Jones’ one-person exhibition is presented in conjunction with the group exhibition 9x9: New Prints by the Mid Atlantic Art Foundation’s Creative Fellows 2003 (on view in the adjacent gallery). In the spring of 2003, Kenneth Jones collaborated with The Print Center and Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper to participate in the MAAF Creative Fellowship in Printmaking. It brought nine artists with nine different print shops together to produce a new work. Jones created a series of six digital prints based on parts taken from a defunct Vandercook letterpress machine recently donated to Rutgers’ print department.

Kenneth Jones received his BA in Photography and Communication in 1986 and his MFA in 1999 from the University of Delaware. In 2002 he completed his post-graduate work in Digital Video at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. He has received many awards and his work has been featured internationally in numerous one-person and group exhibitions and consistently reviewed. Currently Jones is Associate Professor and Director of the Digital Arts at Harford Community College, Bel Air, MD.

re-pose: Isaac Diggs
September 9 – November 10, 2004   

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 9, 2004, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk by Isaac Diggs at 5:00 p.m.

PHILADELPHIA: New York based artist, Isaac Diggs, addresses issues of leisure, gender, race and sexuality in his photographs. His exhibition presents two series of work which stem from Diggs’ ongoing exploration of African American beach parties. At these events, boundaries between public and private blur. In part because of their locations: the beach where certain levels of undress are encouraged. The outfit, or lack thereof, is an amplified projection of personal identity for the benefit of the spectator. As Diggs notes, “the additional presence of thousands of still and video cameras and the continuous glances of participants testify to the importance of being seen and recorded, [as well as the act] of seeing and recording. It’s as if this ritual was staged primarily to be documented.” Diggs, a participant only to the extent of seeing and recording the rituals, uses the camera and formal strategies to focus on specific movements and gestures of the hands. These movements suggest intimacy, immediacy and seduction of the experience. Yet paradoxically, Diggs’ tight focus and magnification of the subject leads to an abstraction which in turn prevents full immersion into the pictorial illusion. The oscillation between intimacy and distance in the image leads to an undefined reality—open to multiple interpretations.

Isaac Diggs received his MFA from Bard College in 2002 and his BA from Columbia University in 1994. Diggs’ first solo exhibition was held at Luxe Gallery, New York in 2004 and has been included in several group exhibitions throughout New York including Artist in Marketplace at the Bronx Museum of Arts, NY (2003) New Prints 2001/Autumn at the International Print Center, NY (2001) and Black New York Photographs of the Twentieth Century, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY (1999). Diggs’ work is in the collection of The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN and his work was reviewed in Art on Paper by Faye Hirsch (March/April 2002).

PhotoPlay: Jenny Lynn
September 9 – November 10, 2004

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 9, 2004, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk by Jenny Lynn at 5:00 p.m.

PHILADELPHIA: The Print Center presents Jenny Lynn’s PhotoPlay. It includes a selection of photographs, hand-made collages and three-dimensional constructions drawn from diverse bodies of the artist’s work which explores the psyche and sensuality. Lynn thinks of her work as visual poems in which she teases the interplay between dream and reality, chance and design, word and image, and collective and personal consciousness. Drawing upon her backgrounds in painting, photography and film, Lynn likes to use everything in her art. She takes an intuitive, tactile, hands-on approach, mixing careful planning with the accidents that happen during the creative process. It's an active collaboration between herself and the work where the finished image then becomes the starting point for the viewer.

A 48-page book also titled PhotoPlay is available in The Print Center’s Gallery Store. Jenny Lynn is based in Philadelphia and received her BFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and studied a year at NYU’s Graduate School of Film and Television. Her work has been recently exhibited in both solo and group shows at The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT, Wexler Gallery and Works on Paper Gallery, both in Philadelphia. Lynn’s photographs have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, Photo District News, and ZOOM International. Her work can be found in collections of The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, and the Polaroid Collection Program, Cambridge, MA. Also known for her trademark Box of Blue, Photototems, and Eyewatch, Jenny Lynn exhibits regularly and teaches and lectures at colleges, universities, and other organizations around the country.

For You: Liliana Porter
September 9 – November 10, 2004

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 9, 2004, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Gallery Talk by Liliana Porter at 5:00 p.m.

PHILADELPHIA: Liliana Porter’s solo exhibition, For You, presents a selection of prints, photographs and video. The subject matter for each image is an item from her extensive collection of souvenirs, toys, functional knickknacks and figurines. Porter places these figures in various scenarios that, with masterful simplicity, distill life into its basic elements, at once playful and tragic. The characters: a bunny, duck, bird, or penguin, are depicted true to their original size either on their own in lithographs or as a group in photographs. The figures take on personalities in a 16mm film (16 minutes). It is a series of short vignettes in which Porter creates relationships between her inert figures and infers qualities that are clearly not there in the objects themselves. Hence, the film builds up feelings of sympathy and loss in the viewer—despite the fact the plastic bird was never alive.

Liliana Porter lives and works in New York. She was raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she attended Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes and then later Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Mexico. She held her first solo exhibition in New York in 1973. Outstanding among her group exhibitions are Latin American Artists of the 20th Century at MoMA, New York in 1993 and Drama Queens - Women behind the Camera at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2001. Her solo exhibitions include The Secret Lives of Toys: Liliana Porter Photographs held at the Phoenix Art Museum also in 2001. Liliana Porter has received the PSC-CUNY Research Award five times as well as scholarships from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Italy, and New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work can be found in international museum collections including Museum of Modern Art, New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, La Biblioteque National, Paris, Museum of Contemporary Graphic Art, Fredrikstad, Norway, Musée d’Art Contemporaine, Montreal, Canada among many others.

HONKY TONK: Portraits of Country Music 1972-1981
Photographs by Henry Horenstein
July 8 – August 21, 2004

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 8, 2004, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. with Live Band

After Party: Drag Show at Bob & Barbara’s Lounge

PHILADELPHIA: This July, The Print Center presents countless unearthed treasures by renowned photographer, educator, and author Henry Horenstein. Taken from 1972-1981, Horenstein’s images capture the last great decade of country music. His black and white pictures range from the original Grand Ole Opry, infamous honky tonks, country and bluegrass music parks to famed performers: Tammy Wynette, Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Hank Williams Jr., Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Minnie Pearl. In Nashville he captured artists at their homes, on the road, and on stage at Nashville’s most famous honky tonk, Tootsies Orchid Lounge. Horenstein also traveled north to photograph the performers and the fans of New England country music scene. The exhibition is touring the country making stops at Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville, Photographic Resource Center, Boston, The Light Factory, Charlotte and several commercial galleries.

The exhibition is accompanied by Horenstein’s recently published book, Honky Tonk, published by Chronicle Books, and is available at The Print Center. The opening reception features local bluegrass band, Fred’s Mobile Homes and beer provided by Victory Brewing Company. The party continues at one of Philadelphia’s longest running drag shows presented every Thursday night at Bob & Barbara’s Lounge, 1509 South Street.

Henry Horenstein has exhibited widely throughout the United States and has published over 15 books. Recent exhibitions include the Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, Afterimage Gallery in Dallas and the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York City. Horenstein’s work is included in numerous collections including Boston Public Library, Camera Works in New York City, Fogg Museum of Art in Boston, Library of Congress in Washington D.C., and Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and in Houston. He lives in Boston.

The Print Center Receives Grant from Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative $18,397 Towards Camera Obscura Project,
TAKEN WITH TIME

PHILADELPHIA: The Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative (PEI), funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by The University of the Arts, announced the list of the 2004 awardees on May 1. Only five Philadelphia institutions were selected including The Print Center who will receive an $18,397 planning grant for an exhibition and outreach project titled TAKEN WITH TIME.

TAKEN WITH TIME will present newly commissioned work created with a camera obscura by internationally known artists Ann Hamilton (Columbus, OH), Vera Lutter (New York, NY) and Abelardo Morell (Boston, MA). Each camera obscura will be installed in a choice location in Philadelphia selected by the invited artists. The new work will be exhibited at The Print Center and documented in an accompanying catalog. Related outreach programming will illuminate the project and the magic of the camera obscura to targeted audiences. The planning grant offers the opportunity to invite each artist to spend two weeks in Philadelphia. At that time they will conduct research and explore the city to determine the site for their camera obscura. Not only will all their expenses be covered but the grant also includes an honorarium for the artists’ time and involvement in the project. The second part of the planning grant will support an art education coordinator to make contact with the community of each selected site and to begin formulating outreach programs based around the construction and use of each camera.

Hamilton, Lutter and Morell each take different and innovative approaches to reviving the camera obscura—the oldest p