The William Ris Gallery is honored to present INTRIGUE featuring the artwork of five printmakers -- Dan Welden, Chris Ann Ambery, Annie Wildey, Justin Greenwald, and Lorena Salcedo Watson -- as well as sculpture Jonathan Pearlman, from October 27 through November 18, 2018.
The innovative and highly evolved printmaking artwork featured in INTRIGUE skirts the perimeters of the abstract and actual, of fantasy and reality. Printmaker Chris Ann Ambery, who helped to curate and organize the printmakers, explains, “I was drawn to the fact that all five of us have kind of a foot in reality and abstraction at the same time, going back and forth. I feel we each have a very unique expression.” All of the printmaking artwork is created organically in that the prints are pulled by hand, none are digitally created.
Gallery owner Mary Cantone is a longtime collector of etchings, lithography and woodblock prints. “It’s what started my art collection,” shares Cantone. “I think it’s so complex with all its stages and steps, the textures created...I find the whole process intriguing.” Hence the exhibition title.
The five printmakers each have their own unique abilities, most notably Dan Welden who is renowned as a premier printmaker, an artists’ artist and considered a guru amongst his peers and legions of artists, particularly with his innovative creation of the solarplate technique which utilizes a more environmentally safe alternative to traditional forms of printmaking. From Welden’s beautiful linear quality and sophisticated use of color, Ambery’s mixed media facet in vibrant colors with chine-colle, Salcedo-Watson’s “spinal scapes” with graphic displays of vertebrae and other skeletal features of creatures tricking the eye to question if they are landscapes, Wildey’s ethereal images blurring the contrast of concrete and steel with romance and nostalgia, and Greenwald’s abstract
pieces with their layers of repetitive imagery like a Philip Glass composition that give off a multi-dimensional texture, the cohesion of each artists’ work flow together like the individual instruments in a complex symphony.
Jonathan Pearlman’s whimsical sculptures made of repurposed materials he finds have become a part of the staple of the East End arts scene winning multiple awards in juried shows. Says Cantone, “(Pearlman’s) creative thinking steers his one-of-a-kind compositions, sometimes serious, sometimes fanciful. I thought his work, which often have a subtle narrative, would be an appropriate complement to the group show of printmakers.”
The printmakers’ works will include the full spectrum of printmaking, and all artwork exhibited will be limited editions and unique one of a kind monoprints and monotypes. “Each artist has incredible mark making abilities,” Ambery says. Asked to define what mark making means, she explains, “It happens in all forms of art. It’s drawing and developing a language that each artist fosters.” And there is no doubt, each artist will be making their mark with INTRIGUE.