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At Print Biennial, a stamp of approval for student artists

By Hope Green

Girls in doughnut shops. Nightclub scenes. A woman walking a dog. For graduate student Laura Iorio (SFA'02), inspiration for art can strike anywhere.

Even at a gynecological exam.

A woodcut entitled "Routine Visit," Iorio's humorous yet tastefully restrained depiction of that female experience in the doctor's office, is one of three student works to receive a Boston Printmakers Award at the Arches Second Biennial Student Print Exhibition, currently on view at the 808 Gallery as part of the 2001 North American Print Biennial.

A second graduate student, Hisashi Oguchi (SFA'02), received a jury commendation for his surreal etching "Underground Landscape." A frightful tangle of roots appears to originate from an eggplant-shaped object, suggesting an ecosystem run amok or perhaps an alien seed growing in the earth.

The image, he says, came to him in a nightmare after he spent the evening listening to drum and bass technomusic from the early 1990s.

"It's very underground music," he says. "It makes me think of hidden places under the soil and in tree trunks. I was trying to connect those elements -- the music and the images that are hidden from our sight."

The Biennial, the most prestigious printmaking show in the Northeast, contains a select group of professional works from across the United States and Canada. The accompanying Arches show is a juried selection of 173 student prints representing 18 New England college and university art programs. Many of the prints are for sale.

Works in both shows reflect the evolution of printmaking, which is really a broad term for several techniques involving impressed images. These images may be etched on plates, carved out of stone or wood blocks, composed on silk or plastic mesh, or created on some other surface, including a computer screen.

A total of 14 School for the Arts students have work on display at the Biennial. Iorio and Oguchi are both participants in SFA's graduate painting program, which allows them to take an elective printmaking course.

"When you're in the studio 10, 12, or 15 hours a day, you sometimes move toward one medium or the other -- maybe you paint for 8 hours and make prints for 4," Iorio says. "If you're painting something and you're not sure exactly what to do with it, you print, then you can go back to the painting and have those works inform one another."

Printmakers tend to work in communal studios where they can share equipment, such as hot plates, acid trays, and etching presses. SFA has two of these shops.

"One thing I enjoy about printmaking is the community that surrounds it," Iorio says. "You have older and younger people working in the shop, so there is an exchange of ideas across the generations."

The Biennial is in the same spirit. "The main thing it does for the students is it brings them into a larger community of artists," says Marjorie Javan, president of the Boston Printmakers, which cosponsors the Biennial with SFA. "Somebody who has worked for many years still likes to go and see what they're doing in relation to everyone else. That's especially good for students, and it's good to have that experience at a young age."

The 2001 North American Print Biennial and Arches Second Biennial Student Print Exhibition are on view at the 808 Gallery, 808 Commonwealth Ave., through April 8. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, call 358-0922.

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16 March 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations