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June 4 - July 6, 2022 Ink & Image 2022 Featuring Printmaking by Archway Artists Davis, Gray, Perkins, Riccetti, Slaby, Spencer, and Straight Guest Artists: Alexander Squier and Molly Koehn |
Archway Gallery is pleased to be a sponsor and exhibitor as part of the city-wide PrintHouston 2022 celebration of printmaking. Mary Lee Gray will take center stage as the Featured Artist, along with six other Archway Gallery printmakers, Blaine Davis, donna e perkins, Shirl Riccetti, John Slaby, Liz Conces Spencer, and Robert L. Straight. Archway is also fortunate to have two participating guest artists, Alexander Squier and Molly Koehn, both accomplished printmakers and instructors at the Art League of Houston. The artists will be present at the gallery on Saturday, June 11, 2022, to visit with viewers and explain their printmaking processes, beginning at 1:00 p.m. through the opening reception, with an Artist Talk at 6:30 p.m. The exhibit will highlight the expressive power of the medium and the diversity of methods used in making a print.
Featured Artist: Mary Lee Gray is an Emeritus member of Archway Gallery. She has an extensive background in printmaking, acquiring her master’s degree from the University of North Carolina and her EdD from the University of Houston. She has taught locally and served as an art director for the New Orleans public television station. Gray’s woodcuts and linocuts combine transparency with layers of collage to create complex nuanced images.
Guest Artist: Alexander Squier is a visual artist who works across media, including printmaking, drawing, video, and installation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Studio Arts from the University of Rochester in 2010, and his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Tufts University) in 2013. He taught printmaking there before returning to his hometown of Houston to pursue a large-scale installation opportunity, “Remnants/Visions,” in Sharpstown. In 2018, Squier received the city’s Individual Artist Grant to complete, “Earthly Bodies: The Texas Brick Archive,” a mobile museum and archive of bricks collected from around the city. Currently, Squier has a studio at Box 13 Artspace in Houston’s East End, where he also serves as Exhibition Coordinator. He teaches printmaking at the Art League of Houston and the Texas Printing Museum, and headed the Printmaking Department at the Glassell School of Art (MFAH) from 2016 to 2020.
Guest Artist: Molly Koehn. Through observation of the urban environment, Molly Koehn utilizes fiber-based processes to create responsive artworks that embrace the temporal qualities of our fabricated environments and offer parallels between natural and synthetic. Printed, woven, and stitched line by line, layer by layer, and color by color, her works embrace the ever-shifting urban skyline, becoming monuments and mirrors to time. They are as much a skyscraper as they are an empty lot. They are a window as much as they are the sky, and they are native as much as they are cultivated. They blur the line between natural and artificial and ask questions about whether a line exists at all.
Blaine Davis has been a Houston printmaker for over 30 years. Currently a member of Burning Bones Press, and a new member of Archway Gallery, he works mainly on copper plate etchings. His work involves multiple processes on a single plate, including hard ground, soft ground, aquatint, and others. Controlled accidents, textural transfers, and reduction of the plate size results in what is, hopefully, an acceptable image. After printing, other methods are often introduced, such as chine colle' and viscosity printing; even a basic intaglio print might appeal to the eye.
Primarily a painter, donna e perkins brings her love of experimentation to printmaking. For her monoprints, she uses metallic acrylic paint, sometimes augmented with drawing. When perkins was still small enough to stand in the church pew, her parents gave her paper and pencil to keep her quiet during services. In junior high she was given oil paints. Donna has been drawing and painting ever since. After earning a master’s degree from the University of Houston at Clear Lake, she taught art in public schools for 20 years. In 2008 she joined Archway Gallery.
After many years of line drawing, watercolor, and teaching, Shirl Riccetti was introduced to printmaking and its many intriguing techniques. While she has experimented with various techniques; she has settled on using Scratch Foam Board. She draws her composition, cuts using X-ACTO blades and scissors, then prints. Her printing surfaces include watercolor paper, rice paper, and brown paper, and she creates her prints with acrylic paint, printing ink, and calligraphy ink.
John Slaby became involved in printmaking in 2016. After working extensively with non-hazardous electrochemical methods on zinc plates, John has since begun experimenting with drypoint methods. Primarily an oil painter, Slaby has used this medium as an extension of his work with the human figure and other subjects. He has been a member of Archway Gallery since 1993 and currently serves as the Treasurer.
For Liz Conces Spencer, printing her steam-rolled piece Journey was a memorable experience. “I thank my good friend Kevin Cromwell for turning me on to the fun and potential of making an oversized plate and then letting a piece of heavy construction equipment roll over it!” says Spencer. The work itself chronicles the movement of people, so poignant now, but no more so than it has ever been.
Robert L. Straight works across many media, including glass, wood, metal, and printmaking. His prints, whether silkscreen, block, or intaglio all come from his imagination. “I have a sketch book that I doodle in,” says Straight, “then I scan the doodles into the computer and enlarge and adjust the scale of the sketch. They are generally lighthearted and designed to make you smile.”
Featured Artist: Mary Lee Gray is an Emeritus member of Archway Gallery. She has an extensive background in printmaking, acquiring her master’s degree from the University of North Carolina and her EdD from the University of Houston. She has taught locally and served as an art director for the New Orleans public television station. Gray’s woodcuts and linocuts combine transparency with layers of collage to create complex nuanced images.
Guest Artist: Alexander Squier is a visual artist who works across media, including printmaking, drawing, video, and installation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Studio Arts from the University of Rochester in 2010, and his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Tufts University) in 2013. He taught printmaking there before returning to his hometown of Houston to pursue a large-scale installation opportunity, “Remnants/Visions,” in Sharpstown. In 2018, Squier received the city’s Individual Artist Grant to complete, “Earthly Bodies: The Texas Brick Archive,” a mobile museum and archive of bricks collected from around the city. Currently, Squier has a studio at Box 13 Artspace in Houston’s East End, where he also serves as Exhibition Coordinator. He teaches printmaking at the Art League of Houston and the Texas Printing Museum, and headed the Printmaking Department at the Glassell School of Art (MFAH) from 2016 to 2020.
Guest Artist: Molly Koehn. Through observation of the urban environment, Molly Koehn utilizes fiber-based processes to create responsive artworks that embrace the temporal qualities of our fabricated environments and offer parallels between natural and synthetic. Printed, woven, and stitched line by line, layer by layer, and color by color, her works embrace the ever-shifting urban skyline, becoming monuments and mirrors to time. They are as much a skyscraper as they are an empty lot. They are a window as much as they are the sky, and they are native as much as they are cultivated. They blur the line between natural and artificial and ask questions about whether a line exists at all.
Blaine Davis has been a Houston printmaker for over 30 years. Currently a member of Burning Bones Press, and a new member of Archway Gallery, he works mainly on copper plate etchings. His work involves multiple processes on a single plate, including hard ground, soft ground, aquatint, and others. Controlled accidents, textural transfers, and reduction of the plate size results in what is, hopefully, an acceptable image. After printing, other methods are often introduced, such as chine colle' and viscosity printing; even a basic intaglio print might appeal to the eye.
Primarily a painter, donna e perkins brings her love of experimentation to printmaking. For her monoprints, she uses metallic acrylic paint, sometimes augmented with drawing. When perkins was still small enough to stand in the church pew, her parents gave her paper and pencil to keep her quiet during services. In junior high she was given oil paints. Donna has been drawing and painting ever since. After earning a master’s degree from the University of Houston at Clear Lake, she taught art in public schools for 20 years. In 2008 she joined Archway Gallery.
After many years of line drawing, watercolor, and teaching, Shirl Riccetti was introduced to printmaking and its many intriguing techniques. While she has experimented with various techniques; she has settled on using Scratch Foam Board. She draws her composition, cuts using X-ACTO blades and scissors, then prints. Her printing surfaces include watercolor paper, rice paper, and brown paper, and she creates her prints with acrylic paint, printing ink, and calligraphy ink.
John Slaby became involved in printmaking in 2016. After working extensively with non-hazardous electrochemical methods on zinc plates, John has since begun experimenting with drypoint methods. Primarily an oil painter, Slaby has used this medium as an extension of his work with the human figure and other subjects. He has been a member of Archway Gallery since 1993 and currently serves as the Treasurer.
For Liz Conces Spencer, printing her steam-rolled piece Journey was a memorable experience. “I thank my good friend Kevin Cromwell for turning me on to the fun and potential of making an oversized plate and then letting a piece of heavy construction equipment roll over it!” says Spencer. The work itself chronicles the movement of people, so poignant now, but no more so than it has ever been.
Robert L. Straight works across many media, including glass, wood, metal, and printmaking. His prints, whether silkscreen, block, or intaglio all come from his imagination. “I have a sketch book that I doodle in,” says Straight, “then I scan the doodles into the computer and enlarge and adjust the scale of the sketch. They are generally lighthearted and designed to make you smile.”
UPCOMING EVENTS
Sunday, June 26, 6 p.m. |
Voted Houston's "Best Place to Buy Art," Archway Gallery is owned and operated by 34 Houston-area artists. Since 1976 we have been dedicated to welcoming and supporting the arts in Houston through weekly live figure drawing sessions, our annual Juried Exhibition, hosting music, dance, writers' events and much more.