Blog

CIA Student Artists: Behind The Scenes Of The Cma Exhibition

12/20/09  |  Posted by  |  Posted in CIA Students

The spirit of experimentation that inspired Paul Gauguin in the late 19th century lives today in the work of students from The Cleveland Institute of Art. Want to see the evidence? View behind-the-scenes videos of the making of "CIA Students: Cleveland, 2009," an exhibition of the work of 21 CIA students in printmaking, photography, video and painting and more at the Cleveland Museum of Art. "CIA Students: Cleveland, 2009," is an exhibition that grew out of a collaboration between CMA and the Institute, which started as a printmaking recreation video and now includes this exhibit ? recreating a 19th century artistic tradition of using cafés to exhibit art. This CIA-CMA connection began about a year and a half ago, when the museum was preparing for "Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889," which opened Oct. 4 and runs through Jan. 18. Created in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, it focuses on the work that Gauguin displayed at the Café des Arts, a restaurant established for the run of the Paris's world's fair. The fair showcased established artists of the day, but it was also common for others to set up their own exhibits around the fair to sell work to the huge crowds the fair attracted. When the decorations for the Café des Arts failed to show up on time, Gauguin snagged an opportunity to hang his work, along with the art of other up-and-comers. What Gauguin displayed was a series of zincographic prints now called the Volpini Suite: 10 prints plus a portfolio with a frontispiece. Heather Lemonedes, CMA associate curator of drawings, is co-curator of "Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889." Since the Volpini Suite is the centerpiece of the show, she wanted to find out as much about the prints as possible. "I wanted to talk to printmakers to get the artist perspective," explains Lemonedes. She called on Maggie Denk-Leigh, head of CIA's printmaking department, and Karen Beckwith, a master printmaker and a CIA technical assistant. Out of those meetings came two student-related ideas. One: To have Denk-Leigh's printmaking students create zincographic prints.  Two: To use the museum's café to show off those prints as well as the works of other CIA students in a juried exhibition that would echo the energy of Gauguin and other emerging artists in Paris 1889. The students' zincographic work entailed a bit of research. Better technologies have largely supplanted zincographic techniques, and Denk-Leigh said the department had to search wide to find supplies for her students. Ultimately, the print process was captured and illuminated in a video highlighting the creation of a single print by by CIA student Rebekah Wilhelm, '09, with Beckwith's help on the press. The video, on view in a wing at the end of the Gauguin exhibition, highlights "a rather  dead process, replaced by more accountable, economic methods of reproduction in the print field," says Denk-Leigh. Part of what she loves about her students' work and the video is that it preserves an important tradition. "This culture is losing the tactile quality of this work, and they're also losing the knowledge," she says. Between the printmakers' works and the others, 21 CIA students are represented. As Denk-Leigh notes, those chosen to be part of it were "humbled. They're all like, 'I can't believe I got selected and I can't believe the museum is doing this.' " The exhibition runs through January 24, 2010. CIA students in the show are: Rachel Allen '10 Alex Anthes '11 Adrian Bertolone '10 Hannah Bigeleisen '10 Linda Ding '10 Emily Eckstrand '10 James E. Glick '10 Lauren Juratovac '10 Skye Kellerman '10 Will Laughlin '10 Casey Lawlor '10 Joseph Minek '11 Angelo Nicoletti-Eaton '10 Ashley Pastore '10 Barbara Polster '10 Rachel Shelton '11 Timothy Skehan '10 Scott Stibich '10 Liz Valasco '11 Molly Walker '10 Rebekah Wilhelm '09 by Karen Sandstrom

• Comments
  1
• 
• Tweet

Leave a comment

Name

Comment

Security

  Submit

Back to blog listing