Ink Slung In Branford, As Printmakers Unite

Allan Greenier's "Untitled" (portrait of Severija Janusauskaite). Ruby Szekeres Photos.

The woman in the print holds her hand over her left eye, hiding from something—or someone—no one else can see. Her short hair is slicked back, vibrating in fine black and white lines. Behind her, black ink pools in the upper right of the frame, dripping down as if it might reach her shoulders and keep going.

Peering out into the dimly lit Keyes Gallery, this woodcut of Severija Janusauskaite is part of Ink Slingers Unite, running at the Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library in Branford through June 23. In total, the exhibition showcases the work of nine artists,  all part of the printmaking faculty at Creative Arts Workshop (CAW).

“It’s just really an honor to be able to show my art with these amazing people,” said artist Mary Mayer, whose monotype Flight of Fancy appears in the show.

Throughout the show, several themes emerge, from the way portraiture can translate into print culture to abstracted images that come alive in their frames. In Allan Greenier’s Gun Crazy, for instance, the artist has worked from a photo of the late Peggy Cummings itself drawn from a film. The print, then, is a picture of a picture of a picture—translated again into a different medium.

Faces interest Greenier, and are the center of most of his prints. If he sees an image that grabs his attention, he’ll flag it, sometimes taking a screenshot (especially “when I’m lazily surfing the web,” he said) to save for an art project somewhere down the road. 

That was true for Untitled, a woodcut that pictures the Lithuanian actress Severija Janusauskaite looking out at the viewer. Greenier created the piece using the woodcut printing technique, which carves away “negative” space to create a "positive" image (it’s essentially a stamp). In the show, three of Greenier’s four pieces are woodcuts; a fourth is a silkscreen print.

That process uses a screen which then is layered with an inked design, using a squeegee to transfer the image.

While Greenier finds inspiration from film and media, artist Margot Rocklen pulls from her globe-trotting journeys in the show. The artist traveled to Shanghai in 2019 for an exhibition where she found herself engrossed by artifacts of pottery. During her time there, she was gifted a húlu— a gourd, which in Chinese culture brings its owner good luck and prosperity.

“The shape was perfect; it was a tiny version of the large gourds I’d seen in the community gardens near my house,” she said. “The utilitarian aspect of the gourd, and its seeming inspiration for the shapes of both ancient and contemporary pottery was a connection I needed to explore.”

Explore it she did. In Potter’s Magic: Balancing and Centering, a suite that comprises five prints, Rocklen used the monotype technique, which unlike wood printing or silkscreen makes the print unique (“mono” literally means it is one of a kind, although some monotypes have something called a ghost image). Monotype printing is when the artist creates their piece on a surface such as glass or metal where they apply ink to and transfer it onto their paper.

For Rocklen, monotype printing “is freeing,” she said—in part because it allows her to incorporate multiple techniques and “work easily in large sizes.” When she’s working outside of monotype, she also uses the Mokuanga printmaking process,  a traditional Japanese process in  which an artist uses a block of wood, carved with the artist's design and water-based ink.

Mayer, who lives in Branford, also brought her love for monotype to the show. Keyes Gallery is special to her, she said: it’s been the site of one of her solo shows, and she finds the space “wonderful.”

For Ink Slingers Unite, Mayer came with a total of six pieces. Three of them were created by using monotype printing and the other three used etching. While she’s  heavily inspired by Japanese art, she said, she mostly lets herself find the inspiration along the way.

She hopes those at CAW do the same as she manages the print room there, prepping the equipment for all types of styles.

One of her pieces, Flight of Fancy, depicts two birds flying across a red sky. It was unfinished before this show, she said. When she was invited to participate, she was inspired to add to it.

Art has been important to Mayer for most of her life, she added. It isn't necessarily the finished product that is what draws her, but creation.

“I let the process lead me,” she said.

This article comes from a graduate of the 2024 Cohort of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative. Ruby Szekeres is a rising junior at the Sound School.