Center for Contemporary Printmaking Micro-Residency in Norwalk, CT

Shelley Langdale, Curator and Head of Modern Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art awarded a micro-residency at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking for my selected print at the Boston Printmakers 2019 North American Print Biennial. I had the fortune of working with Master Printer Chris Shore to create a small edition of copper plate etchings with chine collé. The print will be finished with screen printed layers and will debut at my solo exhibition at Cade Tompkins Projects in Providence, RI in May.

Workin' at the Textile Mill in Raid the Icebox Now with Sebastian Ruth: Witnessing at the RISD Museum, Providence, RI

Workin’ at the Textile Mill, which is held in the permanent collection of the RISD Museum, was selected by Sebastian Ruth for an exhibition entitled Witnessing as part of a multi-exhibition installment of Raid the Icebox Now. Sebastian created a video and musical composition which accompanies works from the collection. The exhibition is on view from September 13, 2019 - June 26, 2020.

More about Raid the Icebox now from the RISD Museum: To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its exhibition Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol, the RISD Museum is engaging contemporary artists and designers Pablo Bronstein, Nicole Eisenman, Pablo Helguera, Beth Katleman, Simone Leigh, Sebastian Ruth, Paul Scott, and Triple Canopy to create new bodies of work or create a unique curatorial project using the museum as a site for critical, creative production and presentation. Employing the galleries and digital platforms as well as spaces beyond the museum walls, these artists will question dominant narratives and highlight the strengths and idiosyncrasies of the museum’s collection, which includes more than 100,000 works spanning ancient times to the present. A landmark example of artist-curated museum exhibitions, Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol(1970) presented entire sections of objects as they appeared in storage, with little or no connoisseurial regard for their condition, authenticity, or art historical status. It remains one of the most celebrated and subversive exhibitions in contemporary art history.

More about Raid the Icebox Now with Sebastian Ruth from the RISD Museum: Sebastian Ruth explains, Much of my work questions how to integrate musical experiences and the life of a community for mutual benefit. I’ve been inspired by educator John Dewey’s project in the 1930s to find ways of “restoring continuity” between art and everyday life experience. Dewey worried that the formality of art spaces prevented people from seeing art as lively, meaning-rich encounters connected to a sense of purpose as humans in the world. Philosopher Maxine Greene took this a step further and said we can and must “lend works of art” our lives—we must allow ourselves to see art as speaking to our core questions, not in an abstract or cerebral way, but in a way that connects to our memories, our pasts, our lived lives.

Witnessing considers how museum galleries can be places to see the everyday as art and art as belonging to the everyday. Smokestacks and factory scenes, a cluster of chairs, trees next to water—how are these possibilities for stopping and seeing differently?

Sebastian Ruth is a musician, educator, and organizer whose work has been in reimagining careers for musicians at the intersection of performance, teaching, and deep community collaboration. Through the work of Community MusicWorks, the organization he founded in 1997, Sebastian and his colleagues have continually experimented with the forms and traditions of music making.

Winter Flounder selected for The Boston Printmakers 2019 North American Print Biennial, Jewett Art Center, Wellesley College, MA

Winter Flounder was selected for inclusion in The Boston Printmakers 2019 North American Print Biennial, juried by Shelley Langdale, Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. My print was also awarded a prize from the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT to work with Chris Shore on a new edition of etchings in mid-November 2019.

Cloud Level, Solo Exhibition at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Commons Gallery

I am happy to announce the solo exhibition, Cloud Level, organized by Gaye Chan at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. The exhibition highlights work that uses a combination of intaglio and screen print to depict landscapes diminished by massive oceans or infinite skies. Prints include Pouring on Jamestown, picturing the eastern side of Conanicut Island in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, where impending storms of layered clouds hang low over the land; Winter Flounder, based on an old freeway exit ramp that, during cold months, transports the driver to an icy world with stone cliffs that resemble a mountain pass; and Leave Your Troubles Behind where an oddly monumental sun casts a golden glimmer on the ocean, fireworks explode in the distance and a small fishing vessel hurries away followed by a shrouded sea creature.

Cloud Level was on view at the Commons Gallery at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa from January 7 - February 8, 2019.

The exhibition ran concurrently with the Honolulu Printmakers 91st Annual Juried Exhibition, Juried by Jeffrey Dell, in the Main Gallery.

Snow Leopard and Niagara & Visitor Prints for AS220 Printshop Fundraiser

In support of the AS220 Community Printshop this year I donated Snow Leopard to the Print Lottery 2018 Fundraiser, as well as an edition of Niagara & Visitor prints. The edition of 20 sold out on September 28, 2018.

Niagara & Visitor 2018, screen print, 6 x 8 inches, edition of 20

Snow Leopard 2018, screenprint, 10 x 10 inches, edition of 10

Glacial Drift at St. Anselm College

Installation Views at Comiskey Art Center, St. Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire

St. Anselm College, Comiskey Art Center, hosted Allison Bianco: Glacial Drift which was on view April 19 - May 20, 2018. Organized by Kimberly Kersey Asbury, Josh Dannin and Tauna Sisco, the show featured new prints and included an artist talk and printmaking workshops for students in the Conversatio and Studio Art courses.

Emphasized exhibition at the Hawai'i State Art Museum

The Print Little Gramma Near the End is included in the exhibition Emphasized at the Hawai'i State Art Museum.  from HISAM: Through a selection of work from the Art in Public Places collection this exhibition explores the various ways that artists play with scale, and how this in turn affects the viewers' responses and understanding.

All images courtesy of the Hawai'i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts

Leave Your Troubles, included in Public Art, South Korea

Leave Your Troubles Behind was selected for inclusion in an article entitled, What You Need to Know About Edition, written by Yoon Sae Hee. The article appears in the November 2017 edition of the South Korean publication, Public Art.

Beauty of Mokuhanga at the University of Hawaii at Manoa

The Old Jamestown Bridge series was selected for inclusion in Beauty of Mokuhanga: Discipline and Sensibility in conjunction with the International Mokuhanga Conference 2017, held at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.

Images courtesy of Gaye Chan, Chair, Department of Art and Art History

from UH Manoa: The juried international exhibition Beauty of Mokuhanga: Discipline & Sensibility celebrates the Third International Mokuhanga Conference, which is being held outside of Japan for the first time. Mokuhanga, a traditional Japanese woodblock printing technique, is widely recognized through ukiyo-e prints that were popular during the Edo period (1603–1868).

Beauty of Mokuhanga features 107 woodblock prints and hand-printed artists’ books created by 68 invited artists from around the world. The diverse works include abstract to representational styles, vibrant to subtle hues, contemporary commentary and humor, and an unusual pair of plaited prints. This exhibition bridges time periods, places, generations, and disciplines through a celebration of the tradition of mokuhanga. It promotes the understanding of mokuhanga and its history, and encourages the study and practice of mokuhanga printmaking in the global art community. Artists represent the countries of Australia; Canada; Croatia; Finland; Ireland; Italy; Japan; Macau, People’s Republic of China; the Netherlands, New Zealand; Norway; Poland; South Korea; the United Kingdom; and the United States of America.

The Providence Art Club

The Old Jamestown Bridge Series was selected by Kathryn Wat, Chief Curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, for inclusion in Making Your Mark, an exhibition at the Providence Art Club, Providence, RI, which will be on display April 2-22, 2017. The opening reception is free and open to the public, and will be held on Sunday, April 2 from 2-4pm.

Atlantic Time Reviewed in Art New England by Liz Lee

The sea is the central character in Allison Bianco’s Atlantic Time a collection of intaglio and screen printed works inspired by the Rhode Island coastline and defined by the artist’s efforts to reconcile that present-day, real-life seascape with the more nebulous one that exists in her memory and imagination.
    The Sinking of Matunuck is a panoramic triptych of the tiny beach community where Bianco spent her childhood summers. Here the meticulously etched landscape is augmented by the accidental nuances of the printing process itself; fingerprints become distant storm clouds, and wire brush marks become wisps of wind carrying flying debris across the sky. A screen-printed layer of glow-in-the-dark pink represents the real-life menace of rising sea levels that threaten to swallow the community whole, while the arc of a dayglo rainbow suggests a future much less grim.
    Bright screen-printed overlays also reimagine the landscape in Later that Day at Second Beach, a series of six panels set on the cliffs of Middletown, RI. Here jagged, etched rocks and a bright orange sea sit below an aquatint sky punctuated by the loping arcs of pink fireworks. The scene looks backwards to Hiroshige’s Fireworks over Ryogoku Bridge but somehow feels more like a futuristic landscape from a distant planet.
    Hiroshige’s influence is also present in Leave Your Troubles Behind, where a monolithic sun hovers over the Block Island shore. A googly-eyed sea creature is screen printed over the intaglio, hinting at the humor suggested by the piece’s title -- a reference to the silly TV jingle used in commercials for the Block Island ferry. Similar creatures appear from the dark waters in The Old Jamestown Bridge series, a set of three prints depicting the destruction of the rickety structure that used to connect Conanicut Island to the mainland.
    Conanicut Island also features in Pouring on Jamestown, but here the main focus is the massive deep blue sea, etched with currents and dotted with white foam that the artist created by experimenting with whiting powder, which is typically used as a cleaning agent. Here, and elsewhere in Atlantic Time, it’s fitting that the ocean shares commonalities with the printing process itself. Both are rhythmic yet unpredictable, both full of surprises that occasionally wash up, disrupting the scenery.  -- Liz Lee

Atlantic Time at Wheaton College, Norton, MA

Installation Views at the Weil Gallery, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts

Allison Bianco: Atlantic Time was curated by Michele L’Heureux, Gallery Director at the Wheaton College Beard and Weil Galleries during the winter of 2016/17. A catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition. Installation photo credit, Scott Lapham.

Catalogue Forward by Michele L’Heurex:

Wheaton College sits less than 30 miles from the Rhode Island coastline, which features prominently in Allison Bianco’s exhibition Atlantic Time. Moreover, Wheaton’s students hail from many coastal communities around the globe—including California, Maine, and Florida, and as far away as Venezuela, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates. For most of these students, returning home after short or long periods of time is fraught with emotion, possibility, and nostalgia.

It is this kind of nostalgia—inspired by her own Rhode Island homecoming after living in Hawai’i for a time—that informs Allison Bianco’s prints. Exquisitely drawn coastal panoramas recede into richly colored, dreamy landscapes that evoke childhood memories and the passage of time. Who better to understand the cycles of change that people and their environments undergo over time than the college student who returns home year after year to find familiar landscapes—and themselves—changed forever? Furthermore, Bianco’s impeccable craftsmanship and innovative layering of printmaking techniques is not only an inspiration to Wheaton’s budding artists but is also the ideal vehicle for a nuanced and textured examination of nostalgia, a sentiment familiar to most.

Wheaton College’s philosophy is predicated on collaboration, and in that spirit, this exhibition allowed me to collaborate with Cade Tompkins Projects of Providence, RI, for which I am grateful. Cade Tompkins has been a superb advocate for Allison Bianco’s work, as well as for dozens of other emerging and established contemporary artists, through her gallery exhibitions and collaborations with leading institutions throughout the United States, and I am thankful for her hard work and generosity.

Atlantic Time opening at the Wheaton College, Weil Gallery, December 1, 2016

Allison Bianco: Atlantic Time will open at the Wheaton College Weil Gallery, Norton, MA on December 1, 2016. Opening reception: 5:30-8pm in the Watson Fine Arts Building. Atlantic Time will be accompanied by an artist catalogue, with forward by Michele L'Heureux, Gallery Director and essay by Britany Salsbury, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, RISD Museum. On view in the surrounding Beard Gallery will be a student curated exhibition of work from the Wheaton College permanent collection, exploring the theme of water.

Art in an Airstream, November 3 to 6

Announcing the new print Streaming 2016, debuting at Cade Tompkins Projects satellite exhibition, Art in Airstream, during the IFPDA Print Fair, Park Avenue and 67th Street, New York, NY. Visit the exhibition page to view works for sale. Streaming was printed by Allison Bianco and DWRI Letterpress, partial proceeds to benefit the IFPDA Foundation.

Zeppelin Featured in Exhibition of New Acquistions at University of San Diego

From http://www.sandiego.edu/galleries/exhibitions/hoehn-family-galleries/

Imprint: Recent Acquisitions and Highlights from USD’s Print Collection

6 October  - 16 December 2016

Hoehn Family Galleries

Founders Hall

This exhibition will span over four galleries across campus, and features over ninety works highlighting the University of San Diego’s broadening collections of prints and Native American art.  In the Hoehn Family Galleries, Imprint will highlight the University’s Print Collection, which has experienced exponential growth in the last four years, nearly tripling in size.  Most of this growth has been through donations, gifts, and bequests that have been as diverse as the history of the graphic arts itself.  Recent acquisitions have reached as far back as the 15th century, and include major works from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S.  Also featured are works by seminal graphic artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Hendrick Goltzius, Edward Munch, James McNeill Whistler and Anthony van Dyck, among others. 

Innervisions: New Prints 2016 / Summer at IPCNY

Text courtesy of IPCNY: International Print Center New York presents “Innervisions: New Prints 2016/Summer” from June 16 – September 24, 2016 in its gallery at 508 West 26th Street, 5th Floor. “Innervisions” was selected by artist Dan Walsh from over 2,000 submissions by some 800 artists. The exhibition features fifty-four projects by fifty artists, including thirty-one artists exhibiting for the first time at IPCNY. Walsh’s collaborative with the process extends to his installation of the exhibition and a written statement about the works included. The exhibition reflects the growing geographic reach of New Prints submissions, with artists exhibiting for the first time from Tennessee and California, as well as Australia, France, Finland and Poland. Ten countries are represented in the exhibition.

Artist are: Marina Adams, Alison Alder, Rosaire Appel, Peter Baczek, Allison Bianco, Monika Brzegowska, Phillip Chen, María Chillón, Douglas Collins, Claudia Cron, Luca Cruzat, Ella Desmond, Annelies Dykgraaf, Leslie Eliet, Beth Fein, Robert Fitzmaurice, Gabriella Grill, Gary Groves, Alicja Habisiak Matczak, Vanessa Hall-Patch, Takuji Hamanaka, Emma Hammond-Thomas, Amber Heaton, Cecily Brooke Howell, Sarah Hulsey, Su-Li Hung, Paul John, Lynne Johnson, Hildur M. H. Jónasson, Tressa Jones, Maho Kino, Andrew Kozlowski, Steve McClure, Christopher B. Lane, Nancy Lasar, Marc Lepson, Stefano Luciano, Monika Meler, Carol Montgomery, Thomas J. Norulak, Kristina Norvilaite, Cheryl Paswater, Dennis Peterson, Carrie Phillips Kieser, Eija Piironen, Senso, Suo Yuan Wang, Cory Wasnewsky, Ian J. Welch and Susan York.

Presses and publishers: Bleu Acier Inc. (Tampa, FL), Cade Tompkins Projects (Providence, RI), Endless Editions (New York, NY), Galerie Schumm-Braunstein (Paris, France), Matrix Press (Missoula, MT), Press Rappel (New York, NY), Spazio Grafica (Vicenza, Italy), Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, NM), Three Cheers Press (Nashville, TN) and VanDeb Editions (Long Island City, NY).

NO FLOATS Solo Exhibition at AS220

Allison Bianco: No Floats
Opening Reception Saturday, April 2, 5-7pm
AS220 Project Space, 93 Mathewson St, Providence, RI

Pouring on Jamestown 2016, intaglio and screen print, 36 x 60 inches, edition of 8

This exhibition debuts the new edition, Pouring on Jamestown, which was partially funded by a Visual Arts Sea Grant from the University of Rhode Island.  The panoramic view of the eastern side of Conanicut Island was etched using a single copper plate that spans five feet wide and three feet tall. This etching layer was printed on the monumental printing press at the AS220 Community Printshop in Providence. With a ten-foot press bed, it is one of the largest presses of its kind in the United States.

Art in Print Review

Thank you to Art in Print for including a review of
Later that Day at Second Beach (above) in the March/April 2016 issue

Read the article by Britany Salsbury here.

Contemporary Mokuhanga at Cade Tompkins Projects

Cade Tompkins Projects featured a printmaking exhibition by a group of artists whose work expands the boundaries of mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese woodcut process. Mokuhanga is achieved with use of water-based inks, hand-printing techniques and Japanese-style printing papers. The prints selected for this show present contemporary imagery and vernacular. Some works adhere strictly to the traditional process and others combine techniques such as etching and hand-stitching.

Highlights include Yoonmi Nam’s Oishii, a masterfully minimal image of cut flowers arranged in an everyday drink carton; Daniel Heyman’s hand-printed book, Sing with a Lovely Voice, which presents testimonies of former inmates at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq; David Curcio’s MS.45, a nun with a gun, red lips and red nails; Stella Ebner’s silhouetted The Hunters which achieves a deep space with expert layering; Allison Bianco’s The Old Jamestown Bridge picturing the 90s dynamite explosion of the rickety Rhode Island landmark; and Hiroki Morinoue’s Dragonfly Pond, a vibrant pseudo-landscape that exploits the grain of the woodblock to stunning success.

Artists in the exhibition include Katie Baldwin, Allison Bianco, David Curcio, Stella Ebner, Kevin Frances, Takuji Hamanaka, Lois Harada, Daniel Heyman, Hiroki Morinoue, Yoonmi Nam, Serena Perrone, Eva Pietzcker, and April Vollmer.

Commedia: New Prints 2015 / Autumn at IPCNY

Images and text Courtesy of IPCNY: International Print Center New York presents Commedia: New Prints 2015/Autumn from November 19 – January 16, 2016 in its gallery at 508 West 26th St, 5th Floor. Commedia was selected by Tomas Vu, artist and Artistic Director of the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies (NY). The exhibition consists of sixty-eight prints by sixty artists selected from over 2,000 submissions. On view during IPCNY’s 15th Anniversary year, Commedia is the fifty-second presentation of IPCNY’s New Prints Program, a series of juried exhibitions organized three times each year featuring prints made within the past twelve months. An illustrated brochure with a curatorial essay by Mr. Vu accompanies the exhibition.

In his words: “The title of the show, Commedia, is the original title of Dante’s Divine Comedy….Dante’s embrace and elevation of humble materials, and the specificity and personality they created, are reflected in the works I have selected….As the show has come together, it has been wonderful to see the works start to speak to each other….I see conversations starting in one place and finishing in another, I see the categories blur and then come back into focus, and I am taken to the same place Dante transported me to: wandering between states, striving for ascension.”

Artists are:  Todd Anderson, Kathy Aoki, Evan Bellantone, Marcin Bialas, Allison Bianco, Mary Lynn Blasutta, Sebastiaan Bremer, Noah Breuer, Patrick Casey, Nathan Catlin, Phillip Chen, Matthew Colaizzo, Nick Conbere, Aurélien Couput, David Curcio, Kara Dunne, Scott Espeseth, Megan Foster, Carl Fudge, Rebecca Gilbert, Kevin Haas, Ellen Heck, Amira Hegazy, John Holmgren, Mary Hood, Cary Hulbert, Eeva Huotari, Fleming Jeffries, Crystal Johnson, Leekyung Kang, Kamil Kocurek, Andrew Kosten, Andrew Kozlowski, Sara Langworthy, Yujin Lee, Michael Loderstedt, Kate MacNeil, Barbara Madsen, Renee Magnanti, Nicole Maloof, Jessica Meuninck-Ganger, Barbara Milman, Anne Muntges, Lorella Paleni, Kurt Pammer, Margherita Paoletti, Jill Parisi, Alyssa Piro, Kasey Ramirez, Mark Rice, Jenny Robinson, Jungyeon Roh, Michelle Rozic, David Sandlin, Carrie Scanga, William Skerritt, Evan Summer, Rob Swainston, Clare Szydlowski, and Sergey Zlotnikov.