David Collins

Pilot Jack 30, monotype on Asian paper, 15 x 37, 2005

Gail Flanery

Distance - 15x22 - monotype with handwork - 2011

Hugh Kepets

Tama (Red), intaglio, 18 x 36

Artists interest in extending their work into multiples has led to myriad investigations into printmaking and its endless possibilities for innovation.  To create prints, artists form collaborations with print shops and master printers.  These partnerships are synergistic skill-shares between artist and technician.  This panel will explore the nature of some of these partnerships and the many approaches, concerns, and issues that are part of this process.

Moderator:  Kathy Caraccio, Master Printer  
Artists Panelists:     David Collins
                             Gail Flanery
                             Hugh Kepets

Kathy Caraccio apprenticed for four years as a Master Printer at The Printmaking Workshop, Inc, directed by Bob Blackburn.  She established the K. Caraccio Printing Studio in 1977, and it has since taken on dual roles as both print shop and gallery, housing her collection of over 3,000 prints and handmade books.  Over the past decade, Caraccio’s studio has shifted from its earlier focus on collaborative plate-making and editioning to non-acid plate-making and monotype projects using non-traditional techniques, including pochoir, silk aquatint, and hanga (Japanese water-based woodblock printing).  Caraccio specializes in projects with emerging artists and first-time printmakers.  As an exhibiting artist herself, she stays excited about making art and meeting aesthetic challenges, fostering creative inspiration while utilizing her skills in a broad spectrum of stylistic trends and printmaking techniques.  In addition, she cultivates an apprenticeship program for artists and art students  interested in printmaking, which has drawn over 100 interns from all walks of life. Among the artists she has editioned for are:  Ed Baynard; Romare Bearden; Bob Blackburn; Hugh Kepets;Robert Kipniss; Sol LeWitt; Louise Nevelson; Harriet Shorr, and Joel-Peter Witkin.  She continues to collaborate with Emma Amos, Jackie Battenfield, Lamar Briggs, Dave Collins, Gail Flanery, George Nama, and Adam Pitt.  Caraccio studied in Japan under master hanga printer Toshi Yoshida in 1984. 

She  has taught printmaking at Columbia University, Parsons the New School for Design, Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, Lehman College, New York University, the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, and the Women’s Studio Workshop.  She is currently an instructor at the National Academy School of Fine Art, and teaches an off-site program in New York City for students from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

David Collins is best known for densely layered abstract paintings inspired by his family's history in Cold War era technology. His Current work reflects upon the unreliability of memory and his recollections of specific places such as homes, airports and construction sites. In these paintings the viewer is lead through a complex space of geometric planes and color. Structures assemble into familiar forms while simultaneously they are expanding and fragmenting.

Collins has exhibited nationally and internationally with Kenise Barnes in Larchmont, NY; Susan Eley Fine Art, NYC; Heidi Cho Gallery, NYC; Jeffery Coploff Gallery NYC; Valley House Gallery, Dallas TX; Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta GA; The National Academy, NYC; Dorsky Curatorial Program, Queens NYC; The Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Sanbao Ceramic Art Museum, Sanbao China. Awards include a Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop fellowship and two Yaddo residencies. In 198 8 Collins received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Born in Iowa and raised in Texas, Collins now lives and wrks in New York City.

Gail Flanery grew up as an army brat living on bases in places all over the world. Gail graduated from Cooper Union and lived downtown and made art in the 1970’s. She found representation in NYC and gained initial success selling large pastel drawings. At one point she was introduced to printmaking and began a decades long exploration of the print process. She worked for many years for the Studio In A School Foundation teaching art in public schools in New York City. Gail is currently a member of the 440 Gallery in Brooklyn. 

Hugh Kepets: Working primarily with structural, architectural and still life subject matter,Hugh Kepets work goes far beyond a simple depiction of material. Complex and engaging, his work transforms familiar objects into highly evocative abstractions. He renders precise and patterned close-ups by utilizing meticulous highlighting and shadow effects creating a feeling of three dimensional space through  carefully observed architectural and still life details. Focusing attention on the intricacies of each object, Kepets uses his sharply cropped compositions to express the sheer beauty of shapes and forms and constantly plays with formal notions of  flatness, figure-ground relationships and compositional symmetry clearly in control of an immense amount of information and a subtle and present technical prowess. Hugh Kepets has had numerous one-person shows of his paintings, drawings and prints in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toronto and Dallas. His work has been included in numerous group shows in the US and abroad and is part of major museum, university and private collections.

Every concert of Larisa Dolina is a fantastic show full of unforgettable moments and charming aestheticism.
In her new spectacular show Extrovert’s Dreams Larisa Dolina opens the deepest depths of her heart. With light fragrance of nostalgia, the program includes well-known songs from the old romantic movies which make you recall the most touching moments of your life. The show also features a selection of jazz hits, first introduced by such superstars as Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, which Larisa brilliantly interpreted in her two jazz albums Hollywood Mood and Route 55, produced in cooperation with George Duke. The culmination of the program is a medley from one of the most popular musicals in Russia Love and Espionage in which Larisa Dolina stared in 2010.

"Poor Liza is an original, stimulating, and powerful work of dance theatre."
– The Moscow Times
 
Chulpan Khamatova, one of today's most talented and renowned Russian actresses, and Andrey Merkuriev, the leading soloist of the legendary Bolshoi Theater, combine forces onstage in a modern rendition of “Poor Liza,” the Russian classic Nikolay Karamzin’s story of love, seduction, betrayal and social conflict. Showing the immortality and transcendence of these themes through the combination of theatre and dance, this celebrated duo pushes the limits of both in a sophisticated production by the renowned choreographer and stage director Alla Sigalova and composer Leonid Desyatnikov. The play has been nominated for the Russian National Theatre Award “The Golden Mask” and is regarded by public and critics as the most provocative, brave and sophisticated work of theatre arts in recent years. 
 
Liza: Chulpan Khamatova 
 
Erast: Andrey Merkuriev
 
Stage Director & Choreographer: Alla Sigalova
 
Music by Leonid Desyatnikov
 
Set designer: Nikolai Simonov
 
Musical director Alexey Goribol

Photos by Amanda Gentile