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College of the Atlantic Showcases Printmaking |
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Written by Linda Sendecki
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Thursday, 30 November 2006 |
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Of the more than 25 exhibitions on view across the state this fall, highlighting the legacy and ongoing vitality and variety of printmaking in Maine, the show at College of the Atlantic’s Ethel H. Blum Gallery is among the most diverse. In a single room are hung a quartet of silkscreen prints by master realist Richard Estes, five monotypes by painter Susan Lerner, 13 black-and-white woodcut prints by children’s book illustrator Ashley Bryan and an extensive sampling of the fine letterpress work of the late August Heckscher (1913-1997).
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Heckscher’s reprint of Albrecht Durer’s illustration for “The Shyp of Fooles,” is included in the current exhibit at the Blum.—PHOTO COURTESY COA | Northeast Harbor painter Richard Estes, whose prints are also on display at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, is a master of the urban façade. The coffee shop in “Chock Full of Nuts” is Edward Hopper’s “Night Hawks” without the people — soulless yet stunning in its geometry. The exterior of a boutique in Murano, Italy, capital of glassmaking, is a bit worse for wear, but objects in the window catch the eye and credit cards are accepted — a nifty detail that another artist might have left out.
Where Estes pursues complexity and control, Susan Lerner of Salisbury Cove leans to simplification and dynamic execution. Her oil monotypes, all dated 1989 (when she studied printmaking with Henry Isaacs at MassArt while on sabbatical from teaching at COA), are expressive compositions based on memories of Mount Desert Island. Most noteworthy is “Marsh Storm,” in which the elements — sky, water, reeds — are represented by way of a painterly maelstrom.
Source: Carl Little, The Ellsworth American
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