This event is part of a series – see below for details.January 20, 2023 10:00 a.m.
Demystifying Process: A PVDPrintmakers Exhibition
Event Details
Demystifying Process, is a month-long exhibition curated by PVDPrintmakers. Despite the accessibility offered by printmaking, both in its ability to endlessly reproduce images and the direct process of creating an impression, the practice tends to have an air of mystery. Using the vibrant printmaking community in Rhode Island as examples, this exhibition pulls back the curtain on a wide range of processes. Materials, presses, blocks and plates are displayed alongside prints, celebrating every step of the printmaking process while highlighting the often unseen act of making.
The exhibition includes works by Joanna Booth, Sara K. Dunn, Carey Good, Lara Henderson, Sara Inacio, Serene Lincoln, Marius Marjolin, Elliot Morgan, Sam Nehila, Ariana Padovano, Jules Sharpe, Nicolle St. Cyr, and Zainab Zulfiqar.
PVDPrintmakers is a community organization supporting printmakers and encouraging the practice of printmaking throughout Rhode Island. Originally beginning as an online platform to share artwork from active artists in the area, it has since transformed into a network connecting artists to new opportunities, to each other, and promoting printmaking education. Offline adventures have included free art supply swaps, two zine publications, and an ongoing print trade. PVDPrintmakers is organized by Sam Nehila and Mason Kelly. Find them on Instagram @pvdprintmakers.
The exhibition is on view in the WaterFire Arts Center gallery from Thursday, January 19 through Sunday, February 26, 2023 with an opening reception on Thursday, January 19 from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m.
In addition to the opening event, printmakers and community members are invited to participate in networking event that will take place on Thursday, February 23 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Visitors are also invited to two printmaking demonstrations, woodcuts with Serene Lincoln on Thursday, February 16 from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. and monotype with Elliot Morgan on Saturday, February 18 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
The WaterFire Arts Center store + gallery hours are Wednesday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, 10:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.
ARTIST BIOS
Joanna Booth is a black, queer, artist, from Philadelphia, and recent graduate from Amherst College. At Amherst she majored in Studio Art and Black Studies, while concentrating in woodcut printmaking. Through her work she interrogates human interaction by combining portraiture with the abstract. Most recently she has moved back to Philadelphia and works as a Fob Holder at Second State Press where she continues to work with woodcuts, while also pursuing new printmaking techniques such as monotypes. Next she will be embarking on an apprenticeship at the Fabric Workshop and Museum where she will learn screen printing and how to construct repeat yardages on fabric.
Sara K. Dunn (She/Her) is a queer illustrator, designer, printmaker and sculptor. Born in North America, raised in Stuttgart, Germany, and based in Wampanoag and Narragansett land in Providence, RI. She earned a BFA in Illustration from RISD and decided to stay in Providence, RI to pursue creative projects and endeavors. She cares about aesthetic, and design –creating a cohesive identity in her own art and lifestyle. Sara has created a world of her own while still considering the contemporary world around her, and others who reside in it. She lives and breathes her work, and it means the world to her that other people relate to her art.
Sara dabbles in many different mediums, ranging from detailed pen work to strange compiled sculptures. She likes to consider the relationship between objects and the spaces around them, constantly trying to find new ways of conveying this concept. She is open to doing works that reach different age groups; from ones geared towards children to more sophisticated concepts.
If she’s not holed up in her little apartment, creating, you can find her in gardens around Rhode Island, communing with the plants. Another potential location will be the local flea market, thrift store, or vintage shop.
Carey Good received a BFA in Photography with a minor in Printmaking from the Savannah College of Art & Design in 2013. Since then she has been a darkroom and printmaking educator, collaborator, and publisher showing work nationally and abroad. She currently resides with two presses in Providence, RI.
Lara Henderson is a book artist, printmaker, and designer based in Providence, RI. She is a member of the Art and Design faculty and concentration head for Integrated Studio Arts at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Henderson was also a Design faculty at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Henderson received a BFA in Graphic Design from UMass Dartmouth and an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts.
Sara Inacio is a queer Brazilian printmaker and socially engaged artist currently based in Providence, RI. Sara’s work is about passage; a movement of going through and leaving behind. Their prints, sculptures and installations have a tactile and delicate essence that plays with depth and translucency. Using primarily animal imagery, social interaction and immersive installation spaces, Sara explores the ways we hold, carry and let go, as well as the comfort and fear that co-exists in keeping or being kept safe. Through non-traditional print processes and locally sourced natural materials, Sara’s work evokes a sense of transience and deep connection to place, both in relationship to their surroundings as well as in community spaces.
Sara graduated from Maine College of Art in 2017 with a BFA in Printmaking and Public Engagement. As an emerging artist, they have been a part of several exhibitions, collaborations and curatorial projects across New England. In their social practice, Sara works collaboratively on dialogue-based projects and collective art-making. They co-founded the Ears and Hands Collective in Portland, ME (2017-2019), participated in the Print like you Give a Damn Press at the AS220 Community Printshop. They have attended local, national and international artist residencies including Queer Archive Work (Providence, RI), Art Farm (Marquette, NE) and Green Olive Arts (Tetouan, Morocco).
Serene Lincoln is a locally-based Rhode Island printmaker and painter. They work in the Blackstone Valley, drawing subject matter and narrative from the Cistercian monastic community Lady of the Valley that operated in Lonsdale from 1895 to 1950 when a fire burned it down. The hiking trails, fields, and roads in the surrounding areas are always featured in landscapes of their prints and paintings. Respect and awe for nature have always been a central theme in their work.
Drawing from painters such as Charles Burchfield and Neil Welliver, Lincoln makes shape-based scenes, with color choices inspired by old Romanticism painters and photographer Wallace Nutting. Their prints are sparked by the careful and meticulous early woodcuts of Durer, such as his work in A Ship of Fools, and the sequentially-driven work of Czech woodcut artist Zdeněk Mézl. They look for fluid narratives to depict, and love planning and process to give life to these stories.
Starting their educational journey at Parsons School of Design in 2018 , they then transferred to Rhode Island College and Graduated with a Printmaking BFA and Painting BA in the Fall of 2022. They have shown around Rhode Island, Exhibiting their prints and paintings at the Chazan Gallery, Hayden Gallery, and Queer Art Collective (2021), and are showing again at the Chazan gallery in 2023. They were awarded the Talent Award in the Spring of 2022 from Rhode Island College.
Marius Keo Marjolin is a queer Khmerican printmaker based in Providence, RI. They graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Printmaking in 2021. They are a Teaching Artist at CityArts and a member of Binch Press + Queer.Archive.Work, a cooperatively run printshop and zine library.
Through their vibrant watercolor paintings and screen prints, Marius overlaps colors and textures with characters and symbols from Khmer dance. They are especially inspired by water as a powerful symbol of movement within Cambodian folklore and history, from the Khmer creation myth of a Brahmin and a Naga’s marriage ceremony under the sea, to the stories of boat people fleeing war. Much of their current body of work is grounded in synthesizing research on traditional Khmer art and marine ecology.
Both uncovering and creating hidden layers to a place or subject are integral to their practice. By infusing motifs from their Cambodian heritage, such as the Naga and the Monkey King, with DIY and punk approaches to drawing and image-making, Marius aims to explore an aquatic Khmer-futurist fantasy world through their prints. Their work reflects their layered, multi-cultural existence and explores themes of hybridity, cycles of transformation and reconciling intergenerational trauma.
Outside of their fine art practice, Marius is deeply inspired by the spirit of Providence’s vibrant DIY music and art scene. Their past work focuses on their journaling of music scenes in both Providence and their hometown in Westchester, NY.
Elliot Morgan graduated Rhode Island College in 2020 with a Bachelors of Fine Arts. Taking up printmaking as a concentration, they focused on monotypes and woodcuts. Elliot mainly works in pastel, gouache, ink, and continues printmaking (to THIS day).
Sam Nehila is a printmaker and art historian in Providence, RI. He has been working with stone lithography since 2018, but sometimes dabbles with drypoint, cyanotype, and linocut processes. His studio and research practices primarily focus on the male nude body in art from the United States, confronting the lack of transgender representation in the canon of art history. He has a bachelor’s degree in Art History with a Printmaking minor from Rhode Island College, and a master’s degree in the History of Art and Architecture from UMass Amherst. He is a co-organizer of PVDPrintmakers, a tour guide for Gallery Night Providence.
Ariana Padovano is currently a senior at the Rhode Island School of Design, where they are pursuing a BFA in Printmaking. Their current body of work focuses on the intersection of printmaking and textile processes through the mediums of weaving, woodcut, screenprint, and quilting. Ariana recently received the Peter St. Onge Memorial Travel Grant Award, which has allowed them to travel to Utrecht and Berlin to study ink drawing, papermaking, and lithography. Upon graduating this spring, Ariana will continue to live and make prints in Providence!
Jules Sharpe is a Korean American comic artist and printmaker living in Providence, Rhode Island. They are drawn to making work that follows a narrative, often inspired by their personal experiences. Recently they’ve illustrated a calendar that has chronicled their personal life in the past year. Right now, their favorite medium to work in is pen and ink, and they love using the risograph to make prints. Jules is also an avid roller skater, but don’t ask them about roller skating unless you have lots of time to listen to them talk.
Nicolle St. Cyr
Zainab Zulfiqar is a visual artist, whose art practice revolves around ritualistic flashbacks and nostalgia, coping with the invasions of safe spaces within the nuclear family.
They are particularly interested in how isolation, surveillance, and the absence of queer narratives have contributed to their experiences of space, time, and memory. Utilizing traditional South Asian miniature references they create a fantastical narrative that is unrestricted and helps combine the past with the contemporary while creating a unique safe space.
Zainab graduated from National College of Arts in 2021 with a distinction in Miniature Painting, and is currently a practicing artist doing their MFA in Rhode Island School of Design with an awarded Presidential Fellowship.
