Beyond Language / Exhibition / Call for Entries

Asheville BookWorks Gallery is seeking work for an upcoming show of prints with the theme, Beyond Language.

Exhibition Dates: March 6 – May 5, 2012

Juror: Bryan Baker.

It is only natural that after all of these years printmaking still carries the torch for it’s greatest partner and eternal love – Letters. A letter can, with ease, deliver to us striking form, content, and even context; usually these fine things are strung tightly with an understanding and usage of language. Within the bounds of art and design this need not be the only use for these uniquely versatile characters in the world of mark making. Beyond Language is to be an exhibition of printed works that find themselves made using these building blocks of communication, all of them structured deliberately not to be read as text, but rather understood as compositions.

To download a PDF copy of the prospectus, please go to: ashevillebookworks.com/events/gallery/

Juror, Bryan Baker. Stukenborg Press, Bryan Christopher Baker’s letterpress studio, has spent the last year exploring the astronomical number of variations possible while utilizing a limited set of variables; six-sided dice. After years of printing with traditional hand-set type, he has begun a series of limited edition prints that are composed and printed solely from dice. Each composition is arranged on the bed of an antique printing press, and inked impressions are pulled directly off the face of the array. These prints touch on notions of order, disorder, fate, and chance; but, also can bring to mind cellular structures, and systems of computation. From within Bryan’s “fields of situations” patterns emerge that shift between textile design and depictions of microscopic forces.

Bryan spent the last three years in Brooklyn, NY where he split his time between teaching printmaking around the city and working in his studio. His studio practice as a printmaker had a chance to develop under a very unique canopy, after graduate school he became a full-time designer and printer at Yee-Haw Industries, 2002-2008. There he made custom hand-printed letterpress ephemera for record labels, music venues, museums, and more. Through the years he spent at Yee-Haw two bodies of work took shape; one out of the purely functional side of print, and another which has much less to do with practical applications and is more concerned with cognition and experience. These two modes and manners of approach now often overlap and influence Bryan’s current work.

A recent move finds Stukenborg Press setting up a letterpress facility in Detroit. This new location will function as both a studio for Bryan’s ongoing projects, and a printshop that is accessible to the local community. stukenborgpress.com

Location of Exhibition. Asheville BookWorks Gallery, 428 ½ Haywood Road, West Asheville, NC. BookWorks is a community resource for print and book arts located in West Asheville, North Carolina. Asheville BookWorks is a gathering place for individuals with an interest in printmaking and letterpress, artists’ books, handmade books, and papermaking. BookWorks is pleased to provide space, equipment and technical support for artistic exploration, collaboration and the sharing of knowledge.

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