April must be Atlanta art history month.
Environmental artist George Trakas was at Emory University a couple of weeks ago to conserve and to talk about “Source Route,” an inviting pathway through Baker Woodland, which was a seminal work of site-specific public art when installed in 1979. Now, we can revisit the work of Nexus Press, the nationally known and respected book art press that flourished here between 1976 and 2003.
A display of artist books published by the press is the heart of “Out of Print,” a group show centered on printmaking, at Spruill Gallery.
Gallery director Hope Cohn has chosen an array from the archives at Savannah College of Art and Design, which assumed stewardship after the demise of the Atlanta College of Art. It shows off the ingenuity and creativity with which artists addressed — or dismantled or reinvented — every aspect of the book, from the binding to the typeface. Some books fold like origami. Others are Thumbelina-sized folios. Equally diverse, the subject matter encompasses documentary photography, purely visual narrative and political satire.
The exhibition is also a timeline of sorts, as it surveys printmakers and acknowledges printmaking organizations from the ’70s to the present. Included are Nexus Press, Rolling Stone Press and the newest, the Atlanta Printmakers Studio, as well as college programs at the Atlanta College of Art, Georgia State University, Savannah School of Art and Design and the University of Georgia.
That this is a living tradition is announced right when you walk in the door.
The first pieces on the right are by Ruth Laxson, the grande dame of printmaking and book arts in Atlanta. “Ego Echo” is a lithograph made at the late Wayne Kline’s Rolling Stone Press. “Just a Note,” is the 2009 etching from an edition Laxson made to benefit the Atlanta Printmakers Studio.
The exhibit celebrates the rich variety of techniques, including photography and collage, that printmaking offers artists, who mix and combine them to create rich surfaces and layered effects. And sometimes sculpture: Jon Swindler made lithographs from the same stone that become successively dimmer before fading to black, framed each and arranged them so they overlap like roof shingles in “The Unfortunate Nature of Lithograph #3.” The piece suggests devolution of the image after repeated print-pulls but also serves as a metaphor for mortality.
There’s a hands-on studio in the back of the gallery, where you can run your fingers across etching plates and woodblocks, see the assorted tools of the trade and try to get your head around the fact that printmaking requires artists to think backward when they create because images print in reverse. Spruill Gallery is also holding workshops for children.
“Out of Print” is an exhibit that will appeal to visitors of all levels of sophistication.
Catherine Fox is chief visual arts critic of www.ArtsCriticATL.com.
GALLERY REVIEW
“Out of Print”
Through May 23. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Spruill Gallery. 4681 Ashford Dunwoody Road. 770-394-4019, www.spruillarts.org.
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