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DOROTHY SCHWARTZ High Street Gallery Please click images above for full view.
Dorothy Schwartz was one of a small number of Leonard Baskin's students at Smith College who merited his fiercest demands (he was kind to those who showed little promise). And it was Baskin who, 40 years later, propelled her back into the studio she had neglected during her tenure as executive director of the Maine Humanities Council. Two feverish years later she had produced a body of work for her first solo exhibit. The show ran concurrently with the Baskin exhibit of the last work he made before his death. Schwartz titled her show "Homage" in honor of her mentor.
For the current exhibit Schwartz has produced a group of unique prints that combine classical training with technical experimentation resulting in a fresh and lyrical body of new work. This is the second Baskin/Schwartz event at Fitzpatrick galleries and the occasion is marked by the introduction of another Baskin protégé.
These works represent a departure for me, although they evolve out of my earlier experiments with woodcut and collage. Each piece becomes its own adventure. I can't predict what it will be or what the evidence of that experience will look like; in that sense the work is always ahead of me. I don't impose a theme or consistent spatial organization; each unique print develops in the way it does.
Paradoxically, even though the pieces look different one to the next, the accumulation allows deeper consistencies to emerge. Perhaps these are related to "process." As in any serious play, there are rules and restrictions. Japanese papers (Moriki, Unryu, and other handmade paper) are torn into varying shapes, printed on woodcut blocks, and marked by transfer drawing, a technique used by Gauguin, where marks are made by applying pressure to paper laid over an inked surface. The resulting shards are layered, attached to each other very loosely by sewing thread, and laid onto a printing plate. Water and archival glue is then applied to the papers, and the whole is printed on an intaglio press on a half-sheet of Rives BFK paper. The heavy pressure of the press bonds the papers and thread to the surface, producing the chine collŽ. The threads show both over and under the paper when printed, as does the embossment made by the plate. The rules of the game are to connect every fragment of paper in some way by the thread, which provides a linear element to each attachment. Another "rule" is to allow the Japanese papers and thread to transgress the edges of the plate.
Finding the right title for this work was a challenge. I considered "Threaded Forms" and other possibilities, but when the word "Attachments" slithered into my mind, I knew it was just right. In the age of e-mail, we use the word so many times a day, and yet my 1979 edition of the American Heritage Dictionary gives no hint of this particular meaning. The older, low-tech, definitions connote the essence of this show: "1. The act of attaching or the condition of being attached; 2. Something that serves to attach one thing to another; a tie, band, or fastening. 3. Fond regard, affection."
High Street Gallery
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