Dorothy Lemelson Innovation Studio + Ed Cauduro and Dane Nelson Collection Studies Lab
Feb 21 - May 25, 2024
Featured Artists:
Sandow Birk, Pat Boas, Melanie Cervantes & Jesus Barrraza, Chris Chandler, Wayne Coyne, Modou Dieng, Nina Elder, Joe Feddersen, The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation, Yoshihiro Kitai, Nikki McClure, Dennis McNett, Paintallica, Alison Saar, Regina Silveira, Eli Sudbrack (Assume Vivid Astro Focus), Storm Tharp and Samantha Wall.
Printmaking studios are unique and curious spaces of creative production present around the globe. They are workshops in the best possible ways: “place[s] for mutual experimentation, analysis and debate, for teaching, learning, inspiration and communal involvement.” The printmaking workshop or studio pulls solo artists of varying disciplines into modes of working, collaboration and discovery that expand the very processes and aesthetic qualities of printmaking techniques into something more: images and narratives in the form of multiples, not just lauded for their use of technique and emphasis on craft and production, but for their enrichment through the workshop’s capacity for social production.
The artists featured in this exhibition represent the range of collaborative print publications that have been produced at PNCA from 2010-2023 within the Watershed Center for Print Publishing and Research, an education space of the printmaking lab at Pacific Northwest College of Art.
The unique and varied practices of these invited artists, both familiar and fresh to print media processes, illustrate the breadth of residency experiences and production occurring within Watershed. Artists in the workshop are able to expand their voice and knowledge in printmaking techniques with support from skilled and in-training printers alike. Students engage in experiential processes with hands-on learning to strengthen their skills in craft and print production, while cultivating an expansion of their own creative voices through intimate collaborations with both emerging and established creatives.
Social Production celebrates the presence of the Watershed Center for Print Publishing and Research in the Portland art community and beyond and the impactful roles that printmaking workshop spaces play in nurturing communal acts of making, sharing, and adventurous learning through the joys of print.
This exhibition is co-curated by Hannah Bakken Morris, Assistant Director of the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at PNCA, and Matthew Letzelter, Director of the Watershed Center for Print Publishing and Research. Framing courtesy of Russell Wood, MFA ‘19, unless otherwise noted.