Printmaking is over 5000 years old, with the earliest examples coming from the Sumerians who used cylindrical carved stone seals to make impressions on wet clay. Throughout history since then, printmaking has had a large impact on human civilization by increasing the speed, accessibility, and affordability of spreading ideas and images, an influence that continues even today in our modern society dominated electronic communication and reproduction. Even as older printing techniques are surpassed by new ones as technological and economic instruments, artists continue to use and preserve historical methods for their unique aesthetic and procedural properties, and so contemporary printmaking is a landscape in which artisan tradition and cutting edge technology coexist. Under Pressure is a group printmaking exhibition exploring this landscape.
Chad Andrews is a professor at Bloomsburg university and is showing works from his “Print is not a button” series, which are a reaction to the lifeless and hands-off nature of digital prints.
Madelin Beatie is a printmaker and sculptor living and working in Williamsport Pennsylvania, and a tenant at Pajama Factory, where she holds a studio and works as a Print Studio Assistant in Studio Paper+, and helps manage the Factory Works Gallery. Her work draws attention to the nuances and details of certain things, which often are tied to personal memories or mundane, everyday experiences.
Jeremiah Johnson is a north central Pennsylvania native and professor at Lycoming College, Bucknell University, and Susquehanna University. He works interchangeably in print, drawing and painting as well as with found and recycled material assemblage, with an interest in culture, folklore, the laws of attraction, and quantum physics.
Chris Leete is both and artist and a graphic designer living in central Pennsylvania, and his work in each field informs the other. He is inspired by the media, popular culture, and his interactions in day to day life, fusing a wides scope of topics and experiences to spawn his imagery.
John McKaig is a professor at Bloomsburg University and Pennsylvania College of Technology. He approaches his work as a statement of empathy, and with the sense that “the only revolution is the personal revolution.”
Wanda Riley is a former nurse, and current director and curator of the Schulman Art Gallery at Luzerne County Community College. Her emphasis for subject matter focuses on humans and their environment, whether physical interaction with the natural environment or the emotional connections and conflicts of humans within their environment.
Devon Stackonis is a painter and printmaker living and working in Berks County, PA. Observation is essential to her process as she often works from her subjects on site. Interested in industry and the changes she’s observed in her own area, Devon’s work is characteristic of Pennsylvania.
Evan Summer is a professor art Kutztown University of Pennsylvania specializing in printmaking, specifically etching on copper and the collograph, a print medium that utilizes a collaged printing plate. Most of his work is landscape and the spaces he creates are usually populated with architectural or geometric forms.
