2018 residency artists
Hj Mooij @ Tiny Splendor with Max Stadnik
Max was fun to work with and very knowledge-able in the studio. Together we made an edition of 90, 28 page books using a risograph machine.
During this process we photographed my original 41″ x 29″ lithographs, separated the colors into individual layers, and printed the images with the riso machine. The book is titled, The Space Traveling Moon Monster, and tells a story of a monster meeting other creatures and experiencing strange phenomena in the far distances of outer space.
Robynn Smith @ The W.O.R.K.S with Thomas Wojak
Robynn Smith’s 2018 CSP Residency print was included in Umbra: New Prints for a Dark Age, IPCNY’s annual juried exhibition of new print work. Alison Saar was this year’s juror.
Charlottesville:Shrouded is a series of screenprints expressing my response to the Robert E. Lee equestrian statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. The statue was shrouded in black plastic in the aftermath of the riot and murder of Heather Heyer.
After seeing the statue, I knew I wanted to explore the image in print, but I was unsure of how to attain the appropriate power and scale. When the California Society of Printmakers granted me an Artist’s Residency Award, to work with Thomas Wojak at his screenprinting studio The W.O.R.K.S, everything fell into place.
I had never done any screen printing, and I didn’t know what to expect or how to approach the medium. I did know Thomas’ work however, and I knew that our shared aesthetic would go a long way to helping me realize effective forms for the Charlottesville images. At W.O.R.K.S I could work on a large scale, with Thomas’ expertise and experience as the perfect introduction to screen printing in a layered, painterly manner.
We began by shooting films from photographs and drawings of the statue, both covered and uncovered. We created 6-7 screens for the project. The photographic image of the statue was printed and then overprinted with the same image in drawn form. Areas of each screen were blocked out and reprinted, emphasizing certain areas of the image. As I learned to work with the ink, all my years of color theory and mixing paint proved extremely useful. Transparent veils of color allowed each screen to be printed in such a way as to cover and reveal selected image areas. As each layer was applied, the buried image peeked out and came to the fore, simmering through the layers.
Throughout the twice weekly sessions with Thomas, I was never sure which prints were finished, or what form they might take on any given day. Eventually, the project came to completion as a series of images rather than as an edition of a single print. Each individual print is unique, yet related to all the others. Some are quite simple, one or two runs only. Others, having been built up through a number of runs, take on an inky patina, enhancing specific areas and obscuring others. In this way the prints perfectly express my experience of the statue. Both covered and uncovered, the statue and the prints bring to the surface the perspectives and feelings of those who experience them, through individual and collective memory, history and culture.
