Ink, Press, Repeat: National Juried Printmaking and Book Art Exhibition

Press Release

Ink, Press, Repeat, a national juried exhibition of traditional and digital print media and book art by 47 professional artists from across the United States, will be on view at the William Paterson University Galleries from April 2 through May 9, 2018. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment. Admission is free. An opening reception for the exhibit will be held on Thursday, April 5, from 4 to 6 p.m.

The exhibition, in the South Gallery of the University’s Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts, includes a variety of printmaking media such as aquatint, collagraph, cyanotype, etching, linocut, lithograph, mezzotint, photogravure, screen print, silkscreen, and woodcut. The exhibition was juried by Alexander Campos, executive director and curator at the Center for Book Arts in New York. Campos selected 51 artworks by 47 artists hailing from 21 states. 

According to Campos, many of the artists in Ink, Press, Repeat experiment with a multi-disciplinary approach to art making. “The multifaceted qualities that make up the sum of an artist working today only lend themselves to malleable artistic freedom that echoes the well-rounded masters of bygone years. The silos of painting, sculpting, printing, etc. are no longer the standard practice. In any contemporary art exhibition of reputable acceptance such as the Venice Biennale or the Whitney Biennial, artists are no longer working in a singular medium but instead employ a layering of techniques and material. The exhibition here at William Paterson University is a modest glimpse into the interdisciplinary activity happening now.” 

The grand-prize winner is Casey Gardner (Set in Motion Press) of Berkeley, California, who will receive a solo exhibition at the University Galleries. The artist explains The Gravity Series (2017) “as a universal, yet intimate phenomenon holding everything in perpetual motion and relationship. Each of the books explore how we live with influences we cannot always control, but rely upon; forces that we cannot see, but feel. So finely tuned is gravity, that if its quantity had been infinitesimally altered, our universe could not have emerged and life would not exist. As one of the four fundamental forces of the universe, gravity is strong enough to hold galaxies together as they reel around the cosmos, and precise enough to give weight to each individual held on earth. Like love, gravity is mysteriously irresistible; invisible yet essential. Magnetically held in a sturdy portfolio printed to reveal the science behind gravity, each of the three books tells a tale of this compelling universal force in relationships of falling, climbing and orbiting.” 

Other artists in the exhibition are J.L. Abraham (New York, NY), Rosaire Appel (New York, NY), Tania Baban (Marina Del Rey, CA), Jared Barbick (Fresno, CA), Curt Belshe (Peekskill, NY), Rodger Binyone (Philadelphia, PA), Tracey Bullington (New Orleans, LA), Danqi Cai (Baltimore, MD), Si Chen (Boston, MA), Allison Conley (New York, NY), Nicholas Costantino (North Bennington, VT), Calgano Cullen and Ashleigh Ferguson Schieszer (Cincinnati, OH), Aurora De Armendi (Bronx, NY), Geoffrey Detrani (New Haven, CT), Nicole Dikon (Honolulu, HI), Sue Carrie Drummond (Jackson, MS), Poppy Dully (Portland, OR), Jessica Dunne (San Francisco, CA), Donald Furst (Wilmington, NC), Marsha Goldberg (Highland Park, NJ), M. Alexander Gray (Annandale, VA), Mercer Hanau (Portland, OR), K. Nelson Harper (Fort Smith, AR), Lyall Harris and Patricia Silva (Charlottesville, VA and Florence, Italy), Sharon Lee Hart (Boynton Beach, FL), Helen Hawley (Madison, WI), William H. Hays (Brattleboro, VT), Trishelle Jeffery (Wichita, KS), Lynn R. Keffer (Chatham, NJ), Val Lucas (Monkton, MD), Theresa Martin (Lawrence, KS), Scott McCarney (Rochester, NY), Kimberly McCarthy (Asheville, NC), Sean P. Morrissey (Fayetteville, AR), Seungkyung Oh (Brooklyn, NY), Kyle Adam Kalev Peets (Interlochen, MI), Landon M. Perkins (Syracuse, NY), K. Sarrantonio (Providence, RI), Sarah G. Sharp (Brooklyn, NY), Dana Stirling (Forest Hills, NY), Students and faculty from Brigham Young University and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (Provo, UT and North Adams, MA), Sandy Tilcock / lone goose press (Eugene, OR), Patrick Vincent (Nashville, TN), Melissa Wagner-Lawler (Milwaukee, WI), Brandon Williams (Easton, PA), and Thomas Parker Williams and Mary Agnes Williams / Luminice Press (Philadelphia, PA). 

Alexander Campos is the executive director and curator of the Center for Book Arts in New York City, and has over 25 years of experience in the museum world. He has worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts.  At the Center for Book Arts, he has organized more than two dozen contemporary arts exhibitions including Protest ≠ Profest: Global Concerns, The Un(FRAMED) Photograph, Racism: An American Family Value, Then & Now: 10 Years of Residency Programs at The Center for Books Arts, Multiple Limited Unique: Selections from Permanent Collections of The Center for Book Arts, and, more recently Ornate/Activate for the South Asian Women's Collaborative Collective. He has also worked with 60 artists, including Buzz Spector, Chantal Zakari, Brian Taylor, Zahra Partovi, and Collette Fu, to produce solo project-based installations and exhibitions, several of which merge photography and book arts. He holds an MA in arts administration/museum management from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education and a BA in the history of art and Romance languages from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ink, Press, Repeat is one of three exhibitions on view concurrently in the William Paterson University Galleries. Captured with hidden motion-activated hunting cameras, the print series in Glen Baldridge: All the Surveyors, on view in the East Gallery, presents both traditional and technologically innovative approaches to combining photography and printmaking. On view in the Court Gallery is Here/Now: An Exhibition of Student Artwork co-organized by the William Paterson University Department of Art and the Student Art Association.

This exhibition is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. The William Paterson University Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print educational materials are available. For additional information, please call the William Paterson University Galleries at 973-720-2654.