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10/1/2008

Making Monoprints
Open studio welcomes community to explore art

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

Taking advantage of the unique equipment at Rice University, three artists will come to campus this fall to produce and print large-scale monoprints and talk about their work in the Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA) Print Palace in Sewall Hall, Room 201. The community is welcome to attend the studios, designed to be an instructional component for students in the VADA monotype course during October and November.

	COURTESY PHOTO
	Three artists will come to the Rice campus this fall to produce and print large-scale monoprints and talk about their work in the Visual and Dramatic Arts Print Palace.

"It's basically a 'Fall Print-Fest,'" said Karin Broker, professor of visual arts. "We are using our newest and largest press -- an American French Tool etching press. It's gorgeous. I've waited 28 years for such a machine."

Kicking off the series Oct. 7-9 is guest artist Pam Longobardi, professor of art at Georgia State University. She'll give printmaking demonstrations each day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and give a lecture at 6 p.m. Oct. 9.

Longobardi has had more than 30 solo exhibitions and 65 group exhibitions in galleries and museums in the U.S., Italy, Spain, Finland, Poland and Japan. Her artworks are included in corporate and private collections across the country, and her work has been commissioned for the Benziger Family Winery, the Hyatt Corporation, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Center and the First Tennessee Bank in Memphis.

A familiar face will return to Rice Oct. 15 for the "Making Monoprints" demonstration. Basilios Poulos, artist and VADA professor emeritus, will conduct the open studio from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. In his 33 years as a teacher at Rice and many more as an artist, Poulos has had more than 40 one-person shows. He has earned fellowships, residencies and awards and maintains two studios, one in Houston and another in his ancestral village in the mountains of the Peloponnese in southern Greece.

Patricia Bellan-Gillen, printmaking professor at Carnegie Mellon University, will come to Rice Nov. 11-13, offering open studios from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bellan-Gillen's works have been described as mixtures of T.S. Eliot poetry and slang.

The artists' works produced at Rice will be displayed Dec. 4-18 alongside student works for the "Big Prints" monoprint exhibition.

The monotype course is fully funded by a Brown Foundation Innovative Teaching Grant and the department. Because the funding underwrites lab fees, paper supplies, print plexi and other materials, students do not have financial considerations for producing creative works.

"The professionalism of the class is ratcheted up greatly because of the additional monies invested by the Brown Foundation and VADA," Broker said.