International Printmakers

FOREWARD It is an honor to present these selected artists for the International Printmakers, an invitational exhibition presented at Gallery Shoal Creek. What brings this diverse group of accomplished printmakers together is my admiration of each one’s visual voice that is so present in their work, and our printmaker interconnections— where a play of “six degrees” makes our social distance very small in the global perspective. Among printmakers this ability to connect is paramount, due to the nature of the print, with its purpose for exposure and exchange, existing in multiple forms, with graphically memorable images. Additionally, of course, is the inherent transportability of the print, which brings these works here together, and mirrors these artists’ experience and international scope. Each of these artists, and myself included, by virtue of possibilities and opportunities, have accepted international connections for our lives through various origins and routes that can be traced as a network and a story we celebrate in America. We artists have each become part of the interconnected international printmaking community—being widely traveled and influenced from new cultural immersions, searching for educational enrichment and independence, accepting the risk of love and re-location.

Annu Vertanen graphically captures the essence of social relationships, as she maps encounters and considers the pattern of interactions and attractions. Koichi Yamamoto cultivates an engraved line that transcends pictorial description into mirror image entities that test perception. Ina Kaur’s works are accumulations of lacelike microforms that could be within us or that become the make up of