OPENING October 31: Datum Chronicle

Datum Chronicle features the work of Tara O’Brien, an accomplished book artist whose installation pieces and artist books range from contemporary structural explorations to traditional leather-bound volumes. Using thread to embroider, stich, crochet and knit the surface of the paper, O’Brien believes that a narrative within a book can be something other than text and images.

A book conservator at one of the largest manuscript repositories in the country, she encounters diaries often. After leaving work, she returns to the 21st century. Datum Chronicle is a study of contemporary personal record keeping. “With a traditional diary, I find myself trapped by the desire to record every moment,” O’Brien says. “My writing never does the images in my head justice. As technology has changed and permeated our lives, the means of keeping record of events has changed. I rely heavily on my camera and computer. A blog is nothing more than a public diary with the capacity for illustration as never before.”

The exhibit will challege your ideas of books, diaries, memories, and recollections, and will cause you to ask, “which is more beautiful, the documentation of an event or the event itself?”

OPENING December 5: Rising

Rising is an exhibition of prints by the students and interns who work at PRESS daily: artists rising towards their creative futures as designers, printmakers, and lovers of paper and ink.

Printmakers often create portfolios of prints around a particular theme. Each participant designs and prints an image that expresses their visual analog for the topic. Rising includes prints from Intro to Design based on the theme of Steampunk, a science-fiction sub-genre with the aesthetic sensibilities of the British Victorian era and the American Wild West, inspired by authors like H.G.Wells and Jules Verne.  This collection uses the special letterpress process of pressure printing. Pressure printing is an experimental letterpress technique in which a low-relief collage is made with thin papers or objects arranged into a composition, glued onto a sheet of paper and then placed underneath the paper to be inked. The resulting image is similar to a rubbing: a bit mysterious, and a great background for other kinds of printmaking.