We Make Ready

Six students from the UGA in Athens came to visit us in Knoxville this weekend. Each artist provided several sheets of paper in addition to their screens, linoleum blocks, zinc and copper plates, and assorted ephemera. We'll have a show at Gallery 1010 (113 S. Gay St.) this coming Friday from 6-9. Stop by and witness the power of collaborative work.

Collaborative work always sounds good on paper, but the reality of working with others is the same in art as it is in most other industries: it requires that we shift our focus outward from ourselves. Printmaking is blessed by its inherent sociability. In addition to the communal nature of a print shop, the multiple image or object carries with it an historical intention to be distributed, viewed, and experienced on a scale larger than its maker's self.

We don't often talk in critique about an art object's future context. The immediate context is Art School. If we look beyond that, we assume our fine art prints will hang on the wall in a gallery, museum, or private collection. This is a generalization: there are many print artists considering space in their installations and doing beautiful work. I especially like the city-scape of the art-school educated street artist Swoon and the sculptural organic forms of my UTK peer, Crystal Wagner (image at right).

If you really want to take it to the streets, to have your voice heard by the largest possible majority, you've got more efficient technology than hand printing. The internet will broadcast images and ideas on a scale previously unimaginable. The humble photocopy might lose a little texture in translation, but how discerning is your audience, anyway? Why do we choose to use lithography and intaglio to make multiples? What ways of knowing are inherent to printing and what can other disciplines (artistic and otherwise) learn from them?

I want to keep working collaboratively. First to keep myself mentally out in the world more and secondly, to expand the realms in which print contributes to our understanding of Art, the World, How to Be a Good Person, etc. Maybe next time we can assemble a team of students from botany, architecture, philosophy, and art and work charette-style towards a yet-imagined product. This is a good beginning.

Lastly, in the spirit of having and broadcasting vision, here are many of the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.