Uncommon Prints x Common Matrices

Woman Made Gallery is seeking submissions for our February – March, 2022 group exhibition juried by Cathie Ruggie Saunders (artist, educator, Professor, Adjunct.  at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Visual Communication Design Department and Professor + Chair at Saint Xavier University, Art and Design Department)

This exhibition will be held at Woman Made Gallery located at 2150 S. Canalport Ave., Chicago, IL 60608 in the Pilsen neighborhood. 

EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION

Woman Made Gallery seeks artworks in any medium that explore the concept and techniques of a transfer in new or unique ways.

The tradition of printmaking embraces using a matrix as a master surface from which to take an impression.  Typical matrices would be wood (as in relief printing), Bavarian limestone or aluminum plates (as in lithography), copper or zinc (as in etching, engraving, or mezzotint), and a silkscreen frame and stencils (as in screen printing or serigraphy).

However, if we open up this practice, we might consider so many more common methods of making “marks.”  After a spring shower, walking through a puddle leaves “prints” of the soles of your shoes (or your bare feet) on the sidewalk.  Holding a hot iron a bit too long on a piece of fabric will result in a freshly “printed” burn on the garment.  Eating a voluptuous summer peach will transfer brilliant pink juice onto the napkin that wipes your mouth.

Finger and handprints using earth pigments and plant berries have been used since the Lascaux cave markings in Paleolithic times.  Babies are often documented with their fingerprints or footprint.  Your skin on those appendages is a matrix you carry with you forever.  Have you ever thought of incorporating its artistic potential into your work?

For this exhibition, the juror seeks artwork in any medium that explores the concept or technique of a transfer in new or unique ways, as in the examples above, or in combination with traditional printmaking methods.

The juror is interested in work that investigates:

• Using unconventional materials that push the boundaries of what is typically considered a printmaking matrix.
• An awareness of the natural world and human body as potential for artmaking.
• Where the intersection of prescriptive and informal printmaking practices merge or collide.
• If quality work is being produced through methods that honor tradition but also bring a contemporary perspective to the definition of the printmaking discipline

ABOUT THE JUROR

Cathie Ruggie Saunders is an artist, educator and mentor. She currently teaches in the Visual Communication Design Department at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is the Chair of the Art and Design Department at Saint Xavier University, Chicago IL. She holds an MFA and MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA from the Northwestern University. Her work has been displayed in exhibitions held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Temari Center for Asian & Pacific Fibers, Honolulu, Hawaii; American Cultural Center, New Delhi, India, World Print Competition, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Footprint:  Northwest International Small Format Print Exhibition.  Seattle, WA. 

She has won 2 American Graphic Design Awards, First Annual Tampa Book Arts Studio Letterpress Excellence Award in Contemporary Ephemera (with Martha Chiplis); Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship; Teaching Excellence Award, Saint Xavier University. Prominent institutions like the Library of Congress, The Art Institute of Chicago, Harold Washington Library Special Collections, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, Vanderbilt University Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Nashville, TN, Huntington Museum and Library.  San Marino, CA have her work in their collections. Her work can also be found in the publications like For the Love of Letterpress, a Printing Handbook for Instructors and Students, written and designed with Martha Chiplis, 2013 (first edition); 2019 (second edition). Bloomsbury, London.