Press conference

Local printmakers from the Blackstone Gallery show their latest work

by Leon Nigrosh

BLACKSTONE PRINT STUDIO 99 At the Heywood Gallery, 70 Winter Street, through June 20.

About four years ago, Nina Fletcher set up a printmaking studio on the fourth floor of the Heywood Building. She polished the floors, whitewashed the walls, and brought in a press and other printing equipment. Since, Fletcher has made the studio available to area artists so that they could pursue their art. The 15 artists presently making use of this facility show their latest experiments in printmaking along the walls of the adjoining Heywood Gallery.

When you first look at the work, your initial impression is that these artists have interpreted varied definitions of "printmaking." Although they all put their creations through a press, what they do beforehand covers a gamut of techniques. Lynn Yeslow-Finn is probably the only artist who comes closest to the traditional use of printing plates, ink, and a press. But instead of the traditional printing of a numbered edition of the same image, she produces one-of-a-kind monoprints. Starting with an image of two women etched on a metal plate, she produced singular variations on the theme. Her #14 is inked in dark blue, and #5 is overdrawn with automatic writing in gold. In #10 she has etched in a third woman and printed the image in red. For #16 Yeslow-Finn has printed an image of only one of the women on different papers and collaged them together in a single picture. Clearly she's interested in seeing how far she can take her technical interest. Yet, based on the raucous posture of her subjects, each of these works has an individual charm.

John Gittens, noted for his colorful, thick, and liquid abstract paintings, explores the combination of photoetching and drypoint-scribing techniques. He juxtaposes computer-generated geometrics with freehand drawing on a single plate and makes his prints only in black on white. The images are strongly reminiscent of Rorschach tests -- is that a figure? an animal? Dave Donahue, on the other hand, carefully scribes concentric and intersecting circles on an axis and then freely inks the whole plate, creating a printed image of perfection floating on a cloudy, imprecise background.

Several of the artists have confined their explorations to monotypes, making painted images directly on a Plexiglas plate, placing paper on the still-wet picture, and sending the whole thing through a press. Elizabeth Hughes uses her pigments sparingly to produce abstract images of California and Parker River, while Mary Webber puts all the colorful details in her watercolor bird print The Spotted Harrier.

Continuing the departure from traditional printmaking, Carol Blackwell's monotypes and assemblages -- like those in her Far and Near series -- are generally a melange of disparate objects glued together and put through a press in a contemporary variation of the old technique of chine-collé. For Zaragosa: Companion Piece and Waits and Measures, Blackwell eschews the use of the press and assembles odds and ends in little boxes in the manner of Joseph Cornell.

But it is print-studio owner Fletcher herself who strays furthest from the traditional with her Breastplates -- 38 free-standing representations of the female torso. Each of these unique eight-inch-tall repousse sculptures is a variation of this universal theme; some are bound, some sag, some are serrated, while others have multiple mammaries, are dainty, or fat. Although these objects are fully three-dimensional, Fletcher claims that they belong in the printmaking oeuvre because she used lead plates like these to make etchings -- and many of the plates are actually passed through the press to create the textures and folds. Whatever your definition of printmaking, the works in this exhibition are worthy of note.

The gallery is open Thursday and Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call 755-7931 or 791-3675.