Purchasing

May 8-30, 2009

Opening reception with the artists:
First Thursday, May 7, 6-8pm

John Grade New Works

Artist talk and walk-through: Saturday, May 16, 2pm

left: Float (Brighton) (detail). Graphite on paper, 2009. right: detail from related sculpture. Cast rubber, 2009.

This exhibition of new work by Seattle artist John Grade presents graphite and charcoal drawings, photographs, sculpture, installation pieces, and his recent work in lithography.  These works connect ongoing projects first introduced at Grade’s 2008 Bellevue Arts Museum survey with upcoming exhibitions and installations scheduled in the U.S. (Seattle, San Francisco, New York), France and England.  Through these various media, Grade explores material realms of transition.  The works document the fleeting moments between two formal states and the agents of transformation that make these changes occur:  water, wind, insects, sand, the sun, and the body.

The exhibition will feature an installation in which Grade has cast hundreds of lips of family members, friends, associates and acquaintances.  The lighting on the piece shifts from the front to the back, illuminating it in different ways to reveal changing textural surfaces and transforming the literal realism to virtual abstraction. At first, the viewer might only focus on the details of the individual lips, then, surmises the criterion for inclusion.  After spending time with the piece, allowing for the light changes, the viewer sees the surface undulate like a landscape, suggesting a surface much like the slot canyons the artist has frequently included in his work.  Gradually the viewer may lose all sense of anything literal and will only see the abstract patterns and shapes the changing light creates.

The artist hopes that the shifting perception from literal to abstract will encourage the viewer to look for similar transformations in the rest of the work.  What appears abstract becomes recognizable and specific to the viewer’s understanding.  Drawings that may at first appear to be only abstract patterns and forms can morph into maps or diagrams.

Grade received his BFA from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.  This is his seventh solo exhibition at Davidson Galleries.  The artist has had two solo museum exhibitions, in 2004 at the Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID and in 2008 at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA.  Grade has received numerous award, and artist residencies.  Many of the drawings in this exhibition were begun earlier this year during a residency at the Macdowell Colony in New Hampshire and during site visits to Utah, Nevada and locations in England.

View work by Grade

Please email or call 206 624-7684 for more information.

Kevin Fletcher Monotypes

Comes a Time in Everybody’s Life, You Can’t Go Home No More. Monotype, 2008.

The Davidson Galleries Contemporary Print and Drawing Center is pleased to present the recent monotypes by California painter and print artist and photographer, Kevin Fletcher.  Fletcher has developed unique imagery informed by architectural and industrial spaces photographed in his travels.  His monochrome images vacillate between realism and abstraction.  Clear radial lines and implied light sources create an “unfussed formal complexity” that is graphically dynamic and yet often delicate.  Many images depict industrial scenes that are in a state of disrepair and decay but still posses power and bold vitality.  These images often have a theatrical flare.  The viewer is led into a highly constructed space that at times feels surreal and unnatural. Fletcher has given himself the task of documenting the constant death and regeneration of urban, and perhaps metaphorically, social constructions.

The artist’s monotypes are made by inking a plate completely with black ink.  He then removes the ink with varying sized matboard chips, rags, and his hand.  When necessary the artist will add lines and marks with rollers after the initial printing.  Fletcher often utilizes the ghost image that remains on the plate after the initial print is made.  He will reapply ink to the plate to create an entirely new image.

Kevin Fletcher received his BFA from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio in 1978 and his MFA in etching and lithography from Syracuse University in 1981.  His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe.  Fletcher’s work can be found in many permanent collections including the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium; the University of Wurzburg, Germany; the University of Wisconsin, Syracuse University, the Portland Art Museum, and the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Saturday, May 23: Kevin Fletcher will give a monotype workshop at Sev Shoon Art Center.
For more information, visit www.sevshoon.com.

View work by Fletcher

Please email or call 206 624-1324 for more information.

Printmaker Artemio Rodriguez‘s mobile printmaking studio GraphicoMóvil is featured in artonpaper‘s March/April 2009 issue:

Over the past decade, some artists and collectives have gone grassroots, literally and figuratively taking their shows on the road—or in the case of the Miss Rockaway Armada, to the rivers—perhaps as a rejection of the commercial gallery system. Examples include Rirkrit Tiravanija’s 1998 monthlong motor-home journey across the U.S., Pablo Helguera’s School of Panamerican Unrest (see artonpaper, January/February 2008), and Patsy Kline’s gallery-in-a-truck, dubbed Gallery ÜHaul. The latest example might be Artemio Rodriguez’s GraficoMóvil. He converted a 1947 delivery truck into a roving print studio, theater, and classroom, coating the body of the truck with several wood-cut-like prints. Continue reading…

• Learn more about GraphicoMóvil and other Rodriguez-run projects

• View available work by Rodriguez

Darkfire, contemporary printmaker Sean Caulfield‘s recent artist book, has taken First Prize at Alcuin Society‘s Awards for Excellence in Book Design, in the Limited Edition category- ‘the finest, hand-printed, hand-bound books of significant content.’ This unbound, 16 x 20 inch book, designed by Susan Colberg, features ten images by Caulfield and ten poems by Jonathan Hart. It will go on to compete in Tokyo and Leipzig.

Caulfield and Hart used themes and poetic images taken from Dante’s Inferno as a starting point for each of the image/text pairings. They share an ongoing interest in the Divine Comedy as well as in the long history of illustrations associated with this work (Blake, Botticelli). The intention was not to illustrate the Inferno in the traditional sense, but rather to use it as a common source from which they could draw formal and conceptual inspiration. More specifically, they were interested in passages in the Inferno, such as Dante’s description of the wood of suicides in Canto XIII or the rain of fire falling upon the shades in Canto XIV, that are sensual in nature and which describe the human body or an environment in transformation. Continue reading…

• View available work by Caulfield

Contemporary realist painter Susan Bennerstrom has a new book out in conjunction with her exhibition Bystander, showing May 6-30 at Terrence Rogers Fine Art in Santa Monica, CA.

• Visit Blurb.com for a preview of the book

• View available works by Bennerstrom

Contemporary artist Holly Downing‘s exhibition Luminous Shadows: Mezzotints and Paintings at Quicksilver Mine Co. opens April 17th with a reception April 18th from 5-6pm.

Included in this Show are recent oil paintings along with rich, sensuous mezzotints. Some of the work is part of a series of paintings based on Peruvian and Tibetan textiles; some pieces illuminate the architecture and objects of traditional cultures around the world.

“For over thirty-five years, Holly Downing has been an artistic stage manager directing the play of light and shadow over what she feels worthy of transforming from the seemingly ordinary in life into the extraordinary, through the subtlety of her art.”— Robert Flynn Johnson, Curator Emeritus, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The exhibition continues through May 25, 2009 with an artist-talk Thursday, May 14 at 7pm. For more information and images, visit the exhibition page.

• View available work by Holly Downing

Please join us this Saturday afternoon at 1pm for an artist-talk and walk-through with Eunice Kim and her exhibition, Collagraphs. The artist will discuss early influences and answer questions about her work.

• View the exhibition online