Honolulu Printmakers look back on 75 years

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	Honolulu Printmakers: A 75th Anniversary Celebration The Gift Prints Through May 4 Honolulu Academy of Arts in the Henry R. Luce Special Exhibition Gallery Honolulu Printmakers 75th Juried Exhibition Through April 6 Academy Art Center at Linekona Honolulu Printmakers Print Fellowships Exhibition Through April 6 Academy Art Center at Linekona, second floor Information: honoluluprintmakers.org

In 1928, a group of local artists founded the Honolulu Printmakers in an effort to encourage the art of printmaking in Hawai'i.

In a small shop, with minimal equipment, they began to create the concept that would inspire a tradition in the organization: the gift print. It has stood the test of time as a viable system for printmakers' survival and has become a dynamic contribution to the history of Hawai'i art.

Supported since its inception by its strong alliance with the Honolulu Academy of Arts, this exhibition reflects a range of time and is a visual catalog of local prints through much of the 20th century. Arranged in chronological order, the prints reveal an evolving creative consciousness from times of peace through times of war.

From the first gift print, "Java" (an etching hand-colored with watercolors made in 1933 by Charles William Barlett) to the present gift-print portfolio designed by Hans Lauffel (which includes prints by Allyn Bromley, James Koga, Wayne Miyamoto, Hiroki Morinoue, and Deborah Gottheil Nehmad), it is obvious that Hono-lulu Printmakers has enjoyed a rich history.

It is also obvious why some of the printmakers of yesteryear — John Melville Kelly, Huc-Mazelet Luquiens, Cornelia Macintyre Foley, Isami Doi, Madge Tennant, Juliette May Fraser, Jean Charlot, John Young and others — became world-renowned artists, their prints now demanding much higher sums than the original $5 price.

In a gallery walk-through, artist, printmaker, art critic, educator and two-time gift-print contributor Marcia Morse said, "Prints are intimate things. I encourage you to look at them closely for their imagery as well as their surface qualities. Think in terms of what is visible in the image but also what the image might want to convey given the time in which it was created."

Early subject matter progresses from landscapes and people of the Islands to World War II.

Then, in the '50s through '70s, artists became concerned with the larger art world and revealed an interest in abstraction.

In 1979, a controversial decision resulted in the inclusion of a photograph, "Mano Point," by Franco Salmoiraghi.

Before that, only more classic forms of printmaking-relief printing, woodcut, linocut, dry point, intaglio, etching, engraving, aquatint, mezzotint, lithography and screen printing were included among the gift prints. (For more information, see the 75th anniversary catalog in the gift shop or the free 11-page brochure, "Making an Impression," available at Academy Art Center at Linekona.)

The '80s and '90s reveal more complicated processes, often incorporating multiple techniques inspired by spirituality, self-discovery and ecological concerns.

The range of techniques is astounding — from the earlier single-colored etchings such as John Melville Kelly's "Kamalii" (1934) to the screenprint in 47 colors by Laura Ruby, titled "Film Crew at Diamond Head" (1988).

In a small etching and aquatint, "War and Peace" (1944), Nils Paul Larsen juxtaposes a white morning glory against sepia barbed wire.

It is, like many of the gift prints in this exhibit, as potent today as the day it was pulled from the press.

Hugh Merrill, head of the printmaking program at the Kansas City Art Institute, is the juror for this year's exhibition.

He is an internationally exhibited printmaker, writer and educator known for his sequential etchings and his collaborative work with young people to create communal art works.

Merrill selected 117 prints in a wide range of printmaking media, gathering the ingredients for a stunning exhibit.

Award winners include Jeera Rattanangkoon's delicate woodcut "Environment," which won the Certified Hawaiian Design Award and was bought by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts; and Phil Uhl's monotype and digital print "Impact," which won the Honolulu Printmakers Traditional and Digital Award.

Digital printmaking is a controversial topic.

However, considering modern technology's contribution to the printmaking process, it is encouraging to see its inclusion and recognition.

The size of prints and range of subjects in this exhibit offers something to interest everyone.

From the thumb-sized photogravure "Doll Face" by Christine Harris-Amos (who won the Estate of James Campbell Award) to the life-size screen print and painting "Self/Others" by Allyn Bromley, these works will stretch your concepts of printmaking.

"What has struck me the most about this exhibit is how many people are involved with the printmakers," says Laura Smith, the executive director of the Honolulu Printmakers for more than a decade.

"Printmakers have to get along with each other," says Smith, "we share equipment, and as artists we have to deal with that."

This spirit of experimentation and cooperation is what sets printmakers apart from painters and gives the slogan on their T-shirt added punch: "Paint is dead, long live ink!"

The 2002 Print Fellowships award includes a stipend, one year of studio access at Honolulu Printmakers and an exhibition.

This year's awards, given to Iris Altamira and Joshua Tollefson, were made possible through a grant from the Laila Art Fund of the Hawai'i Community Foundation, which supports innovative art and strives to nurture recent graduate art students.

Altamira produced "The Live Sea Scrolls: Prints by Iris Altamira." She is blessed. She is fortunate to be passionate about what she does for a living (research associate in taxonomy for the University of Hawai'i Department of Bio-oceanography) and what she does for pleasure (artwork based on ocean plant and marine life.)

Her recent set of six linocuts printed on shoji paper was inspired by the seaweed limu kala. This sargassum drifts on the currents in the North Atlantic near the Bermuda Triangle.

Altamira's large, extremely detailed, long and delicate gold-inked prints of this simple life form transform the commonplace into a magical occurrence.

It is all the more enchanting to know that these images, rendered so exquisitely, are scientifically accurate.

And the seaweed that we have here, the limu kala, is virtually the same as that found in this Sargasso Sea.

Altamira's goal is to finish a hundred "Live Sea Scrolls" that will be hung above eye level, undulating with the flow of air to create the illusion that one is swimming in a printmaker's sea.

Her process is not a simple one. From a roll of linoleum that she mounts on Masonite, she carves the details of her images.

It takes 2 1/2 months to complete each one.

"The inking is a real trick," says Altamira, "because I can't just roll it with one roller all the way down. I split it into 12 portions and roll each portion six times twice." Fourteen hours later, if she is lucky, she will have produced two prints.

Tollefson produced "Darkness and Light: Recent Prints by Joshua Tollefson." In large-format lithographs, he spins a tale of human frailty in an unpredictable and uncontrollable natural world, juxtaposed with elements of commonality.

Whirlpools spinning a set of chairs in "Absence"; raging seas holding a double bed with comforter and pillows in "Where Water Comes Together With Other Water"; and the looming waterfall about to break on the unsuspecting in "Break," reward us with Tollefson's ability to communicate emotionally charged topics in black and white.

"The spiral is an image I have been playing around with for years," says Tollefson. "It is sort of intuitive. When I go to the plate it is a gesture I often make, and it stays with the work. Sometimes the work begins that way."

Mystery and tension fill the work, and there is a sense that there is no escape from the chaos that takes place in our lives — whether self-imposed or not.

Perhaps we can conclude from Tollefson's dreamlike offerings that it might be chaos that connects us all in the darkness, and that acceptance of that fact will lead us into the light.