WITH PRECISION
Remarque hosts International Juried Print Exhibition in Nob Hill through Jan. 27
Twenty-five states are represented, as well as five countries.
The team behind the 11th Annual International Juried Print Exhibition wanted to showcase diversity in all techniques of printmaking.
The annual event is on view through Jan. 27, at Remarque Print Shop in Nob Hill.
“We put out a call for entries earlier this year and went through submissions,” says Jessica Krichels, one of the co-owners. “Our goal is to bring different types of art, specifically printmaking, to Albuquerque.”
The call for entries amassed 520 pieces of art before being whittled down to 43.
“We go through rounds of jurying,” she says. “What we’re trying to do is look for a variety of techniques. Nonprintmakers don’t know many of the different techniques that there are. We go through lithography to woodcut. It all has to be handmade. Digital can be part of the process but the output has to be handmade.”
Remarque was established in 1996 as one of the world’s first completely non-toxic print workshops.
The award-winning print institution was first operated in Albuquerque’s rural South Valley and moved to its current 4,000 square foot location in historic Nob Hill in March 2000.
Remarque was formerly called New Grounds Print Workshop until 2016, when the original founder Regina Held sold the workshop to four local printmakers: Krichels, Lincoln Draper, Mary Sundstrom and Jessica Weybright.
With six Takach etching presses and the facilities to create etching, photogravure, monotype and relief prints, Remarque offers the most diverse printmaking opportunities in the Albuquerque area.
Krichels says the selections this year contain a wealth of black and white works, with a mix of iconic American city scenes from Andrea Kornbluth, Jacob Crook and Peter Baczek, the mysterious nature scenes of Andrew Polk and Robyn Moore, and excursions into the surreal by Snezhina Biserova of Bulgaria and Jaco Putker of the Netherlands.
Monika de Vries’ exquisite etching of a castor bean plant, Nancy Dodd’s “Carlo’s Onion,” and Andrew Au and Jennifer Purdum’s currency inspired “Tyranny for You” bring us into a realm of mesmerizing detail, she says.
“Meanwhile, in sharp contrast to the quiet black and white pieces, we have Brian Lathan’s dreamlike, supersaturated silkscreen print, ‘And I Said to Myself’ and Brett Anderson’s ‘Athena’s Curse.’ ”
Krichels says with the range and depth of artwork in the show, visitors should take note of their similarities and differences, and what makes them flow together – some have very different subject matters but similar color palates.
“Others have commonalities in line work,” she says. “Some seem to have nothing in common, but still go together because of the feeling they invoke. It’s a nice reminder that art is and always has been a way of bringing people together, and even though we have hundreds of different cultures and languages around the world, we all share a common vocabulary in visual art.”