Contemporary printmaking equipment is often large, expensive and the processes are complex, where collectives commonly form to share knowledge and resources. Despite the diversity inherent in printmakers, they come together to share one common thread; the use of a matrix to transfer art onto a surface.

This group show will showcase a variety of prints and the different matrices (silkscreen, wood, linoleum, metal, plastic) used to create those prints. 

Printmakers Mark is a participating exhibition in Crafted Vancouver 2021.

Artists: Barb Choit / Brigitte Potter-Mael / Fu-Chen (Edward) Juan / Gerri York / Gillian Armitage / Jocelyn Barrable Segal / Marie Price / Mariko Ando / Maya Gulin / Molly Gray / Richard Tetrault / Rick Herdman / Xavier Charbonneau Gravel

Banner image:  Goldenhinde from Savary (detail) by Fu-Chen (Edward) Juan

Marie Price

I favour monoprints over multiples. Each piece is usually printed on Japanese Washi or Korean Hanji that is subsequently glued to a board, canvas or heavier printmaking paper. The thinness of these papers belies their strength, enhancing creative potential enormously, since portions of any plate can be printed on the washi and glued onto any other substrate leaving no discernible line. It also enables me to use portions of woodcut or digital imagery that I have done in the past and incorporate them into new work with a small amount of glue creating my mixed media mono prints.

Richard Tetrault

Relief printmaking, including woodcut, linocut and mixed media work, provide me with the

means to explore the dynamics of the urban environment. From the long tradition of woodcut origins in China and Japan to the German Expressionists and up to the present, relief prints offer unique means of expression. Expanding upon traditions has been an underlying impulse in my work. Working often large, incorporating multiblock methods of color printing, I find the possibilities virtually limitless.

Jocelyn Barrable Segal

Jocelyn references elements from the world of “paysage” and botany. She is particularly interested in the universal language of flowers, which stand as icons for beauty and

purity, suggesting a sense of calm and serenity. In her work, Jocelyn shows her genuine love for carefully drawn images on stone, her ability to focus on details, and her courage to let the brush wander in its own authentic language. The merging of these skills and sensibilities result in her visibly unique signature.

Molly Gray

Having grown up outside of the city, surrounded by trees and farmland, my art is influenced by my life on the West Coast, often featuring the animals and nature that surround me.

Rooted in the belief that art can be both functional and aesthetic, my work explores a range of mediums—from linocut and screen-printed stationary and crafted pillows to limited edition hand pulled prints and original paintings. 

Brigitte Potter-Mael

In recent years, Brigitte’s interest in learning more about BC’s flora and its diverse local ecosystems led her to consult with botanists from various academic institutions. This included the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, at Vancouver’s UBC campus, where she was able to learn about the museum’s extensive Herbarium collection from Linda Jennings. The Okanagan and Similkameen Valley grasslands, where the botanist Tanis Gieselman works on important collaborative conservation programs involving grasses seeds from endangered habitats of fauna that is home to that valley, also sparked her interest.

Barb Choit

This work is part of the exhibition, ‘Pronk Boutique’. With these works Choit takes a look at the relationship between art and advertising. Technically the works in the show double as advertisements. In addition to presenting them in the gallery, she uses them to sell vintage shoes on Etsy. 

Edward Fu Chen Juan

My art making processes were developed through cultivation of an ongoing cultural exchange with artists I previously collaborated with in Vancouver and abroad.  The knowledge of plant pigment extraction and papermaking was shared with me to merge with my printmaking practice.  It aligns with my passion as a conservation-concerned citizen and advocate for shared traditional craftsmanship. Each piece in this series was silkscreen printed with inks extracted from indigenous plants of the depicted landscapes.  I have foraged each plant ingredient through consultations with regional botanists and first nation cultural workers.  Each plant has a historic significance to the local people and its environment.

Through this artistic journey, I have been looking into my native roots and continue seeking ways to apply this into all areas of my work. 

Gerri York

Materials and their collaboration with photography interests me a great deal and the qualities of light, transparency and materiality are consistent aspects unifying the images from both series.  In this recent body of work, Botanica, I am continuing to explore “photograms” in the photographic darkroom.  The resulting black and white photo images are combined as multiple images, scanned and printed as digital pigment prints. 

In the on-going body of work, Fold, I examine the creation of folds in origami structures made from photo paper, and later, the accidental and phenomenological result of unfolding.  These 3 dimensional origami forms are first exposed to light in the photographic darkroom, unfolded and traditionally processed as two dimensional black and white photographs.

Rick Herdman

Nature dominates Rick’s imagery, structures, and concepts. These are gathered from his wanderings throughout the province as well as those surrounding his homes in Burnaby and on Gabriola Island. 

Gillian Armitage

When my husband and I began building our minimalist house in Black Tusk Village south of Whistler I was propelled away from working with the mostly two dimensionality of printmaking and painting and had to consider something quite different; a three dimensional space into which one moved.  The basic aesthetic principles of form, space, volume and mass presented me, in this architectural format, with a totally new way of thinking. These pieces, Space, Form & Mondrian, grew out of this erudite experience and were inspired by photographs taken during construction of the house. I designed a window for my studio with rectangular glass panels of different sizes, two of which are made of stained glass, one blue and one yellow, hence the reference to Mondrian.