By Mary Louise Schumacher, Rafael Francisco Salas and Diane Bacha
March 19, 2013
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
From Albrecht Durer to Shepard Fairey, from the halls of the world’s greatest museums to paste-ups on brick walls down the street, the enduring romance of the print has attracted great artists and art lovers for centuries.
With fingers stained in ink, printmakers create works that skirt an edge between technical precision and chance, between the wonderfully fussy and the clear-and-quick. About 1,500 printmakers from across the planet are about to descend on Milwaukee for the Southern Graphics Council International Conference, one of the most important gatherings in the field. In honor of this prestigious confab, which starts Wednesday, more than 50 exhibitions have been planned across the city, an unprecedented collaboration among the city’s arts venues.
The conference, called “Print:MKE,” a play on the world “printmaker” and our airport call sign, continues through Saturday. It is being co-hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts and the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Many of the participating venues will be open for a “print crawl” Friday evening. Here are some of the events and exhibits, mostly free, that are most worth getting to.
“Makers in Print”
MIAD, 273 E. Erie St.
UWM's Inova, 2155 N. Prospect Ave.
A joint international exhibit, these shows celebrate the diverse and idiosyncratic range of print and include works by important Wisconsin printmakers as well. The massive shows anchor the local programming. A review by Art City contributor Rafael Francisco Salas will be posted shortly.
“Ní De Aqui Ni De Allá (From Neither Here Nor There)”
Latino Arts, Inc. 1028 S. 9th St.
In this exhibit, Milwaukee artist and educator Raoul Deal describes the Mexican immigrant experience and the development of cultural identity among immigrants here. In recent years, Deal has been gathering the oral histories from the immigrants who have moved from Mexico to Milwaukee. “Ni De Aquí Ni De Allá” is a collection of large, woodcut prints that interpret all he has heard. The gallery is open Friday but not on the weekend.
“La Ceiba Grafica”
Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, 839 S. 5th St.
This exhibition will include dozens of lithographs produced at La Ceiba Gráfica, a print workshop in Veracruz, Mexico, founded in 2005 to making printmaking facilities available to the public, regardless of ability to pay. The works on view were curated by the organization’s founding members: Per Anderson, Martin Vinaver and Rafael Ruiz. A reception will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday. A gallery talk and papermaking demonstrations will take place Saturday from 1 to 2:30p.m.
Read the full article at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
