Seven ‘Professors of Print’ show art’s possibilities at Washington Printmakers

It makes sense that one show at the Washington Printmakers Gallery is a master class in the art’s possibilities. “Professors of Print” features the work of seven teachers from four local colleges whose styles range from evocatively simple to dazzlingly complex.

Elizabeth Klimek uses serigraph (a.k.a. silkscreen) and lithograph techniques to craft weathered-looking, sometimes wood-grained images of old houses and their environs. Kay McCrohan embosses and folds white paper sculpturally, yielding such standing figures as “The Three Graces.” Donald Depuydt’s large pieces, which combine intaglio and lithograph, feature multi-square photographic images beneath what looks like loosely squeegeed daubs of pigment. John Carr’s “Light as a Feather” is nine small mezzotints of feathers against black backgrounds, hung on wooden pegs like pages of a day-by-day calendar.

(Courtesy Herbert Simon and The Old Print Gallery) - Herbert Simon’s moody composition, “American Night/Neighbor Orion II,” has a window that’s hand-colored red.

(Courtesy Justin Strom and Washington Printmakers Gallery) - “Disappear Into The Obscure” by Justin Strom.

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Georgia Deal and Dennis O’Neil both evoke the past, albeit in different ways. Deal recalls the early days of print- and map-making in such multi-panel screenprints as “Atoll,” while O’Neil’s impressionistic vistas suggest the mists of yesteryear.

Justin Strom’s dark style is also multi-layered, but those strata involve such modern materials as textured polypropylene and urethane resin. The artist’s “Untitled” features blossoms both below and, seemingly, above the surface: Bursts of color within the layers of resin float over the brilliantly hued, collaged image. There’s a hint of the goth-rock album cover to Strom’s prints, which feature wings, flowers and human faces and hands.

Also on display, in the gallery’s small Press Room, is “Rilievi,” a selection of embossed and printed works by Maria Sofia Caligiuri. Designed to evoke the Maryland artist’s southern Italian childhood, the mostly white-on-white pieces hold the contours of shells, eggs and other objects. Caligiuri’s reliefs are made primarily of plaster and paper, with occasional hints of color. They combine a simple, tactile appeal with a philosophical aspect: The three-dimensional paper outlines suggest the absence of remembered objects, but also the permanence of their forms.

‘Winter Contemporary Show’

There’s nothing as bold as Strom’s work in the Old Print Gallery’s “Winter Contemporary Show,” but there are many beautifully rendered pieces in a variety of formats and styles. With one print each by 24 artists, the selection doesn’t have any particular theme or motif.

There are traditional black-and-white etchings and linocuts, such as Paul Marcus’s shadowy “The Old Lady” and Tenjin Ikeda’s “A Study in the Natural World,” which hides a child amid flowers and butterflies. But there are also looser, more colorful aquatints and monotypes, whose techniques mirror the delicacy of watercolor painting. These include representational works such as Peri Schwartz’s “Bottle and Jars I” and Susan Goldman’s “Tangerine Vases,” as well as Philip Bennet’s abstract “Creatures.”

Prints can suggest much with a few lines, sometimes highlighted by blocks of color. Fine examples of this approach include Edward McCluney’s “OSSACIP,” a nude silhouetted against a bright yellow background; Peter Gourfain’s “Winter Light,” a domestic scene endowed with drama by its thick black lines and contrast of blue and orange; and Ellen Nathan Singer’s “Autumn Market,” which depicts fruit, flowers and wooden barrels with seasonal gold and bronze.