“In Short, the Minor”: The 10th Annual Bennington Printmakers Show at the North Bennington Train Depot

The Vermont Arts Exchange presents, “In short, the minor” an exhibition of print work by eleven Intermediate-Level Printmaking students from Bennington College at the North Bennington Train Depot. The opening reception will be on Wednesday, November 30th from 7-9 pm. The show will be open to the public on Thursday, December 1^st from 6:30-8pm, Friday, December 2^nd, 5-7pm, Saturday, December 3^rd, 10am-12pm, and Sunday, December 4^th, 1-3pm.

The students in this year’s Intermediate-Level Printmaking course at Bennington, taught by faculty member Thorsten Dennerline, have proposed and executed projects of their own design, while reading artists’ writings to inform and contextualize their personal work. Isabella Adler, Olivia Barnum, Esme Chant, Livia Chelsey, Wallace Crehan, Miranda Gibbs, Zoe Huey, Kat Jagai, Isabella Poulos, Zadie Ross, and Mary Alice Stewart will present these projects in a variety of media, including lithography, intaglio, collagraphs, monotypes, woodcut relief, and silkscreen.

Working in a traditional studio class structure comprising of critiques, discussions, and group work periods, the students focused in a wide variety of processes and materials. Isabella Poulos is at home in her repetitious building of color and line while building a structure to hold personal histories. Miranda Gibbs uses lithography and monotyping to create a set of handmade books, as well as a series of prints and tapestries focused on female and maternal relationships. Mary Alice Stewart uses woodcut relief on paper mixed with fabric and text to construct a quilt. Zoe Huey is interested in challenging the viewer through depictions of landscape, with considerations of their own relationship to nature. Olivia Barnum explores abstract line imagery through the re-working of a single plate. Similarly, Livia Chelsey explores the process of painting over a preexisting image she created, etching it into a copper plate. Esme Chant works with monotypes and silkscreen to create collages of prints that focus on geometric abstraction. Isabella Adler explores the concept of healing wounds in an installation using collagraphs with monotypes. Zadie Ross works to re-contextualize textile and wallpaper patterns by changing what medium it is printed on and its presentation. Kat Jagai is interested in naturalistic forms and world building with wood blocks.

Mounting final work as a group show in a public community venue both reinforces the community spirit and collaborative nature of printmaking, in which artists share a print shop, equipment, ideas and techniques. It also offers an important challenge to student artists to create, curate, and publicize their work to an audience beyond campus. This year’s exhibition is the print department’s second use of the Train Depot, which has offered the students a new venue to consider developing and mounting their work.