CAMBRIDGE - The Boston Printmakers will celebrate its 70th anniversary with the North American Print Biennial that brings stunning work by artists from across North America and students from 12 area colleges to Lesley University, along with displays and events across Boston and Cambridge.
Jane Goldman, a Somerville artist who has been making prints since 1972, compared the five-week Biennial to the Boston Marathon for its “venerable” status as a regional arts event rich in tradition and significance.
“It provides a wonderful overview of the practice of printmaking and lets you put your finger on the zeitgeist of a remarkable way of making art,” said Goldman, whose hand-colored pigment print was chosen for the show. “Visitors can enjoy a fantastic collection of images for their craft or their beauty.”
After sifting through nearly 2,000 submissions from 770 artists, juror Judith Brodie, curator at the National Gallery of Art, selected 102 prints by 92 artists, including numerous locals, whose work at the Lunder Arts Center reveals both ancient traditions and cutting-edge innovation.
Boston Printmakers President Renee Covalucci said visitors will see a representative mix of traditional methods, such as relief printing, lithography and monotypes, along with digital prints that expand the borders of an art form thought to have originated in China around 100 A.D. or even before.
The Concord artist said the exhibit’s diverse content reflects “an ongoing debate in the art world” about the role of computers in a genre with very deep roots.
“There’s really a little bit of everything for everyone in these shows. Prints attract so many people because it’s very democratic and topical medium that creates graphic images that tell stories which touch people who see them,” she said.
Covalucci paused by one of the exhibit’s most original works, a woodcut on paper fixed onto birch logs to resemble an 8-legged horse by Framingham artist Marc Cote.
Nearby, psychologist and artist Eric Avery watered his boundary-smashing molded paper woodcut that has grass growing from it to suggest the growth of brain neurons.
Whether an artist carves wood blocks or uses a computer to generate images to go on paper, Covalucci said the final effect of “creating something that amazes us transcends the methods used to make it.”
The dean of arts and humanities at Framingham State University, Cote said his 6-by-4-by-3 foot “Front Runners” was “probably my most sculptural work” because it fixed images printed on Japanese mulberry paper onto actual birch logs “so it looked like it was printed on wood.”
Cote said the use of digital technology is another step in the evolution of an art form that constantly reinvents itself.
“As commercial printing evolves, so does printmaking. With technological advances, the next evolution is digital printmaking,’’ he said.
But Cote, who taught art at FSU for 25 years, stressed the printed image’s impact on viewers supersedes the processes used to make it.
This year’s citywide event culminates Saturday, March 3 with an anniversary symposium, “The Boston Printmakers: 70 Years” at the Boston Public Library and continues throughout the day at 16 institutions and galleries in Boston and Cambridge.
The Bay State is well-represented in the Biennial with artists from Framingham, Southborough, Lexington, Waltham, Newton, Lincoln, Scituate, Revere, Andover, Arlington, Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, Northampton, Swansea, Merrimac, Malden, Northfield, Leverett and Florence all chosen to show their prints in the main exhibit.
Julia Talcott, whose work has been selected for numerous Biennials, said, “It’s great to be creating in a dynamic field that’s always growing and changing.”
A Newton artist with 30 years’ experience in the field, she said printmakers “tend to think more cleanly and graphically as opposed to painters who are more concerned with texture and the subtleties of brushwork.”
Talcott does “not oppose digital innovation” but enjoys the aspect of printmaking in which, “I use my hands and actually touch things.”
Asked what she hoped people might feel after viewing her woodcut collage, she replied, “I hope they saw a piece with an intriguing image that made them wonder what it’s about and how it was made.”
Liza Folman, professor of fine arts at Lesley’s College of Art and Design, said the 10th Student Print Exhibition features work by 72 young artists from 12 New England colleges and universities, including eight from Massachusetts.
Shown in conjunction with the Biennial, the student exhibit will be in the Vandernoot Gallery in the Lunder Arts Center at 1815 Massachusetts Avenue.
A Brookline resident, she said the students’ work includes prints from “both ends of the spectrum” made with traditional techniques and 21st century digital processes which are often considered environmentally “cleaner.”
“Getting chosen for this exhibit is an invaluable experience for student artists,” said Folman. “They get to see how their peers are doing and how their work relates to prints by professional artists. It’s invaluable because it helps them know what to aspire to.”
Two of her students showing prints in the exhibit agreed.
Aurora Brush, a junior from Vermont, said, “Getting to show my work provides an opportunity to the part of the experience of an older generation of printmakers and observe what it’s like.”
And JiSun Lee, a graduate student from South Korea, said, “I’ll get to meet other artists and gallery curators who can help me improve my own prints.”
Annie Silverman is happy to have been selected for her second Biennial for her woodcut lithograph, “The Restorative Power of Tea.”
The Somerville artist, who has been making prints for 30 years, said she is looking forward to meeting other artists and see “a lot of different kinds of art in one space.”
“I really love carving blocks because I love working with my hands,” said Silverman. “I love the feeling of being connected to other printmakers across time and space.”
Visitors to the North American Print Biennial will see what she means.