Press Portfolio

The slight variances make each print more valuable. Scherman went one step further by adding blue accents with his paintbrush to each of his prints, which feature a portrait of 1950s actress Grace Kelly."A lot of painters have made etchings, and it seems as if every painter I admire has taken a stab at it," he says. What stands out most in Urban's 17- by 24-inch print is the vibrant salmon pink colour.

U of G Press Portfolio begins unique collection of contemporary Canadian art

Part of the idea is to build a certain exchange between students and artists

Story by Rachelle Cooper
Photography by Dean Palmer / the Scenario

The director of the University's School of Fine Art and Music (SOFAM) is using his flare for big ideas, his painter's instincts and his pull in the art community to help draw national attention to U of G's fine art program.

Prof. John Kissick asked three of Canada's top painters to create original prints that now make up the first edition of the University of Guelph Press Portfolio. Thirty limited-edition portfolios containing three prints are being offered - first to U of G alumni for $3,700 and then to the general public for $4,000 - to raise money for SOFAM. "I'm hoping to create a splash in the larger art community, as well as a bit of a buzz around campus," says Kissick. "The University of Guelph Press Portfolio celebrates the very high quality of our program."

There's no doubt that a portfolio containing original prints by U of G friend Tony Scherman, alumnus David Urban, MFA '94, and Prof. Monica Tap will generate interest in the art world.

"A Tony Scherman piece alone would be worth the price of our entire portfolio, so as a collection, this is about 50 per cent of the going market rate," says Kissick.

The portfolio contains three different genres of work: a portrait by Scherman, an abstraction by Urban and a landscape by Tap, all printed on 100-per-cent cotton, acid-free paper that is 22 by 30 inches. Each print features a dominant colour, making for a striking visual impact. "We didn't plan it, but Tony's has strong blue, mine has strong red and Monica's has strong yellow, which is the primary colour combination," says Urban. "It certainly makes for a good-looking ensemble of prints."

Master's touch ensures quality

The artists created their work with master printer Allen Ash in U of G's printmaking studio, which has one of the best press beds in the country. Ash, who has been U of G's printmaking technician for the past year, has worked with more than 100 Canadian and international artists as master printer for Toronto's Open Studio and the Ontario College of Art and Design.

He says each artist had the choice of creating a work in any of the four printmaking media: intaglio printing (which includes etching), screen printing, relief printing or lithography. Scherman and Urban both chose to do etchings, and Tap did a silkscreen.

Each print in the portfolio is an original, says Ash. "These images have an intrinsic value. The artists work directly in the print format, and they're a limited edition, so we print only a small number, then destroy the plates and screens."

Because the printing is all done by hand, each individual print has its own nuances.

"To produce the etchings, you're embossing the paper as you're printing it, so you're getting very pronounced lines and raised surfaces," says Ash. "The ink is highly pigmented. There's a tactile sensibility to these prints that really can't be reproduced by any media today. You're pressing against a matrix or screen to physically make an image."

Painted accents add interest

"The cool blue adds to the ice-blonde image of Kelly's personality," says Ash. "Tony wanted to add the variations to see what subtle shifts could occur from one print to the other because that'

s what happens as a painter works. It's always changing in front of you."

The portrait of Kelly is in keeping with Scherman's best-known work. Since earning an MA from the Royal College of Art in England in 1974, he has worked primarily in encaustic (wax and oil pigments) on canvas or paper, depicting historical, contemporary and literary figures in the guise of their public and private personas. His paintings have been featured in 80 solo exhibitions in countries around the world, including France, Amsterdam, Sweden, the United States, Germany and England. In addition to being a U of G adjunct professor, Scherman has lectured at universities, art colleges and art galleries throughout North America and Europe. Etching most like painting

Urban says etching is the printmaking medium he enjoys most because it has the strongest relationship with painting.

"I wanted this kind of luminous colour that I associate with watercolour. We wound up rolling the colour over the plate, and that creates a transparent colour, so you're getting the white underneath as you do in watercolour, giving the effect of luminosity."

The first graduate of Guelph's MFA program, Urban has gone on to become one of Canada's best-known contemporary painters. His work has been shown in more than 50 solo and group exhibitions at galleries around the world, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and the Shanghai Art Museum. Through his work, which ranges from boisterous to ornate, he investigates the traditional language of his chosen medium and experiments with its terminology.

Urban says he drew inspiration for the University of Guelph Press piece from artists Ben Nicolson and Piet Mondrian.

"The image is of a fallen tree that's abstracted and sectors off in a rectangle in an asymmetrical way to create an imbalance or an energy that I find attractive."

Silkscreen an ambitious experiment

Tap says she was thrilled to be asked to participate in the first portfolio, partly because it enabled her to work in a form of printmaking new to her.

"Because my manner of painting involves working in layers, I'd been thinking for quite a while that I'd like to experiment with silkscreen," she says. Tap's paintings have been exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally since 1990 and are included in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre and the University of Toronto.

Her work is based on early landscape drawings, predominantly by early modern European masters. She's fascinated by what she refers to as the "grammar of pictorial illusionism" found in these works.

"In my own work, I'm interested in drawing attention to this grammar — the dots, dashes and curlicues that allow the artist to create the impression of, say, fields or trees to form a recognizable image."

Using six colours and six images to create her 22- by 30-inch silkscreen of a landscape was "ridiculously ambitious for a first-timer" says Tap, but the end result was worth all the hours spent experimenting in the studio with Ash.

"There's a lightness and airiness to the colours that now seems to fit with the mark-making," she says. "You can distinguish each layer, and the overlapping colours create new colours. The two yellows are creating a third, deeper yellow, and where these overlay the pale blue, bits of green start to come through, although no green has been printed."

Encounters invaluable for students

Having professional artists work alongside students in U of G's printmaking studio has been an invaluable pedagogical encounter, says Kissick.

"Part of the idea is to build a certain exchange between students and artists who are working at a very high level in the profession the students are studying, using the same equipment and processes. It shows that printmaking is an intriguing and still vital way of making images for contemporary artists, and it underlines that what our students are learning is relevant."

Kissick plans to offer a University of Guelph Press Portfolio to U of G alumni and the general public each fall.

"By the end of five years, there will be 15 University of Guelph Press pieces. It will be a fantastic collection of contemporary Canadian art."

U of G Press Portfolio
Intaglio print by David Urban
Silkscreen print by Monica Tap
Intaglio print by Tony Scherman
$3700 (+ GST, PST) Alumni*
$4000 (+ GST, PST) General Public
Courier delivery is available for a small fee.
For more information contact John Kissick
email: jkissick@uoguelph.ca 
phone: 519-824-4120 x56930