Yalan Yu: Glowing Ground

November 16 – November 23, 2018
Where: Cleveland West Art League (CWAL) Gallery / 78th St. Studios
Exhibition Reception & Artist Talk: Friday, November 16, 6pm — 8pm

Yalan Yu is Zygote Press’ TAIPEIXCLE Artist Resident, in partnership with Bamboo Curtain Studio in Taipei, who is making art in Zygote’s shop and also working with our partnering organizations Thomas Jefferson Newcomers Academy, and the Cleveland West Art League (CWAL). This program is generously supported by The Ohio Arts Council, Taiwanese United Fund, Cleveland Foundation, George Gund Foundation, Cuyahoga Arts Council, Cyrus Eaton Foundation and Martha Holden Jennings Foundation.

Yalan Yu is a printmaker based in Taipei, Taiwan. She works primarily with woodcuts, which serve as a media for expressing personal sentiments and life experiences. The contents of her works revolve around landscapes and the search for authentic beautiful scenery. She received her BFA (2010) and MFA (2014) from the Taipei National University of the Arts. She is in residence at Zygote Press from September 25 – December 1.

Yalan Yu:
My works are mainly woodcut, which serve as a media for expressing personal sentiments and life experiences. The contents of my works revolve around landscapes and looking for authentic beautiful scenery. By composing images into works, the traces of woodcut and the texture of overprints are able to subtly express the inner landscape of my memories and emotions.

I hope to excavate the selections of current media and utilize variable, interesting development spaces through the attributes of Eastern media.

Dates: prints and paintings by Gianna Commito

October 12 – November 17, 2018
Exhibition Reception: 6pm — 8pm / Friday, October 12
Artist Talk: 10am – noon / Saturday, October 20

This exhibition represents the culmination of the 2018 AIR Program which brings an NEO non-print artist into our print shop to create a new body of work. Gianna Commito, our 2018 Artist-in-Residence, is a professor of painting at Kent State University. She has exhibited her work at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), the Akron Art Museum (Akron, OH), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Cleveland, OH), and The Drawing Center (New York, NY) among other venues. Her work included in 2018’s FRONT International. She was awarded the Ohio Arts Council Award in 2017, the Cleveland Arts Prize in 2015, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2004. She represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery / NY.

Dates acknowledges the temporal qualities of this project, wherein very aspect of the printing process was new to me. Unlike my paintings, which are the result of years of experimenting with different materials and techniques to evoke the built environment and the interwoven social experiences within those spaces, these prints are a record of the daily practice of learning. My time at Zygote was not predictable and the development of the work serves as a calendar of my experience.

The Legacy Show

Exhibition on view in the Zygote Press Gallery April 20 — June 15
Opening Reception 6 – 8 pm  Friday, April 20

Artists:
Paul Arnold
David Jansheski
Robert Pelegrin
Mary Owen Rosenthal
Joe Sroka

The Legacy Show presents the work of five influential printmakers with ties to Lorain County who have contributed significantly to the printmaking community: Joe Sroka, Paul Arnold, Mary Owen Rosenthal, Robert Pelegrin and David Jansheski. All these artists have dedicated much of their studio practice to teaching and sharing printmaking with the next generation of young people. In their honor, Zygote Press is mounting an exhibition as well as a series of educational outreach programs to celebrate the artists’ rich legacies. This exhibition is supported by the Nord Family Foundation.

In conjunction with this exhibition we will be holding a slate of educational and public events in Cuyahoga and Lorain counties. There will be a free, public opening reception at Zygote Press on April 20 from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm. Zygote Press artists will also be teaching printmaking to Lorain County elementary school students using blocks from some of the exhibition printmakers. Zygote Press will also host an event for donors and the artists’ families.

Paul Arnold (1918-2012)

was known for his personal, unique style of creating woodblocks and printing techniques. Arnold started the printmaking department at Oberlin College in 1950. As a professor and art department chair, he also acted as president of professional art associations and was a member of various boards and committees. His art has been shown worldwide and is displayed in numerous museums, including the Cleveland Museum of Art. Today his work is seen in permanent collections of more than a dozen museums and has been shown in more than 200 exhibitions.

David Jansheski (1954-2014)

was an Avon Lake resident who studied printmaking and painting at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Cleveland Institute of Art. His pieces are featured in collections through the world including in the Cleveland Museum of Art. His lush mixed-media prints feature gorgeous color and texture through a wide variety of techniques including relief prints, collage and bookmaking. He has traveled throughout Europe, North America and the Mediterranean and lived in Santa Fe, Cleveland, Chicago and Houston.

Throughout his career, Jansheski experimented with innovative techniques in printmaking and papermaking, using handmade, hand-dyed papers with monoprinting and other graphics styles to creates complex, multilayered collages.

Robert Pelegrin (1949-2007)

was an artist who worked primarily through the medium of monotype printmaking.  Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he eventually settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Pelegrin drew much of his inspiration from the landscapes and geography of the American Southwest, and a deep relationship with nature was a central aspect of nearly all of his artwork.

Viewing the works as they are, there is often the suggestion of sculptural forms, even imaginary architecture. In his prints, Pelegrin orchestrates various elements – geology, sunset, feathers, and abstractions of other works –– into an assemblage.

Mary Owen Rosenthal (1929-2017)

was born in West Virginia and lived in Chicago, Evanston, Hudson and Oberlin, where she earned her bachelor of arts at Oberlin College. She also earned a master of fine arts degree from Western Michigan University.

Rosenthal was known for her bold woodblock prints, which often featured social commentary. The former Oberlin resident was a fine artist and printmaker who was also a highly-regarded teacher with a studio in Oberlin, and who was very active in the local arts scene.

Joe Sroka (1966-2017)

is the co-founder of Zygote Press. Joe was a graduate of Cleveland Institute of Art and began developing the organization in 1996 with Liz Maugans, Bellamy Printz and Kelly Novak. Sroka’s technically-complex work concentrated on relief cutting multiple blocks and layering them on top of one another. His efforts were essential to the existence of Zygote Press, where much of the construction, planning and development of the organization was due to his commitment, generosity and sweat equity.

Joe has printed for Rev. Albert for a TIME Magazine issue. He and Liz Maugans did a collaborative print that hangs in the Vern Riffe building in Columbus, Ohio. Joe also has some of his prints in private and public collections.

Processing the Present

Curated by Rebekah Wilhelm
On View: March 9 to April 7
Opening Reception: Friday, March 9th, 6 – 8 pm

Printmaking has a long and rich history of process; of processing and disseminating information, of experimentation in new methods of production, as well as allowing for the creation and production of beautiful and important works of art through the processes available in print. These artists shown here all, in their own way, utilize printmaking as a method of communication, a method of production, and a method of processing and speaking to current issues and concerns in their work. Print media has become bigger than its processes of production, but also is strengthened as a method by the process and conception of its production. It becomes a way in which artists today can process the present.

Featuring works by: 
Jerry Birchfield
Marcus Brathwaite
Amber Nicole Ford
Khelha Chepape Makgato
Liz Maugans
Darius Steward

Fabeln, Fábulas: The Work of Ron Abram

On View: Feb 2nd–Feb 24th

Ron Abram’s interdisciplinary show of prints, film, puppets and sculpture features new works addressing issues of queer identity through the retelling of cross-cultural fairy tales and fables. The metaphorical works speak on abstract and emotional levels: a celebration of Queer magic in the face of fear, repression, and homophobia.

Artist Biography:

Ron Abram is an artist making prints, primarily etchings, for thirty years. His recent work is interdisciplinary in structure and extends printmaking traditions to include animation, film, sculpture and installation. Situated at the intersection of personal symbolism and popular collective iconography and myth, the themes of his work speak to the residue of the memory, repression, homophobia and queer aesthetics. His work has been exhibited throughout the USA and abroad, and in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mint Museum and Moravian College. He has been an artist in residence at Anchor Graphics in Chicago, Illinois; Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California; Flying Horse Editions in Orlando Florida; Temple University Campuses in Rome Italy and Tokyo Japan, Grafikwerkstatt in Dresden, Germany and Taktkunstprojektraum in Berlin Germany. He has worked collaboratively as a designer on theatrical, dance and music productions. His work as a curator extents themes found in his work including exhibitions and portfolios such as Finlandia: Prints and Music Inspired by Tom of Finland (2011), Songs in Reverse: Ten Prints by Eight Gay Men (2010), and Bizarro World: The Parallel Universes of Comics and Fine Arts (2000). He received his BFA from the University of Central Florida and his MFA from Tyler School of Art of Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Abram has taught printmaking and drawing since 1989, teaching at Rutgers, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Tyler School of Art, Abington Art Center and currently holds the position of Associate Professor of Art and Queer Studies at Denison University where he has taught since 1995. El Ambiente was his most recent solo exhibition this past fall at Taller Puertoriqueño in Philadelphia, PA