Printmaking at its core is a labor-intensive and highly collaborative process. The medium’s ability to reproduce images and capture unique visual qualities has influenced numerous creative fields, from graphic design to book publishing. Printmaking disciplines have also had a profound impact on the evolution of fashion design—a rich cultural exchange that is a conceptual undercurrent in Stitched Ink.
The exhibition serves to highlight the voraciously experimental spirit of printmakers, and the endless possibilities of their paper-based medium. Using ink to express the softness of fabric is a challenge that persistently pushes and intrigues both artist and printer. These works shatter the confines of the two-dimensional through expression in ink. In some cases, they utilize other media to enhance ink’s potency.
Stitched Ink highlights not only the possibilities of the print medium but the complex beauty of handwork. Both artist and printer manually work the block, plate, press and ink, rediscovering new intricacies of the medium and the image itself. The problem solving that unfolds between printer and artist to create these fibrous results could not be reached without endless hours of hands-on collaboration. Printmaking, like needlework, is not something that is done with ease but rather discovered with each stitch or layer.
