As anyone who has stopped by a gallery or glanced at an auction catalog knows, art prices are out of reach for many budgets and only getting more expensive as the market escalates yet again.
That’s why prints are so attractive to collectors. In many cases, this medium offers high-quality works by sometimes famous artists at more modest prices, in part because the pieces are produced in multiples.
With more than 90 examples reflecting myriad techniques, an exhibition through Aug. 28 at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities offers one of the largest and most diverse selections of prints in the Denver area in recent memory.
This show is an excellent opportunity for potential collectors to learn more about this field, and it provides art lovers of all kinds a chance to see selections by many widely known artists whose works are only sporadically shown in this region.
Among them are Terry Allen, John Buck, Eric Fischl, Roy De Forest, Hung Liu, Nathan Oliveira, Luis Gonzalez Palma, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Faith Ringgold, James Turrell, Carrie Mae Weems, William Wegman and William T. Wiley.
It is important to define what is meant by “print” in this context. The term gets thrown around a great deal and has accumulated a confusing and sometimes contradictory array of meanings in the process.
Often promoted are so-called “limited-edition prints.” Such pieces are usually nothing more than photographic reproductions of pre-existing artworks in other media, which are produced in a supposedly restricted quantity.
While such works might have some real or imagined collector’s value, they have virtually nothing in the way of artistic value. They are, for all intents and purposes, copies and not independent creations.
Of infinitely more interest and value are the pieces shown in Arvada: original or fine-art prints fabricated using such techniques as engraving, etching, woodcut, aquatint and lithography, as well as more contemporary digital processes.
Like so-called “limited-edition prints,” these pieces are made in prescribed quantities. The key difference is that they are produced entirely by the artist or under his or her direct supervision in collaboration with a master printer.
All the selections in the Arvada exhibition, titled “Five Presses: Selected Works,” were produced – most on an invitation-only basis – under the auspices of five of the country’s most respected print publishers.
The most widely known in the Denver area is Shark’s Ink in Lyons, which was founded in 1976 by master printer Bud Shark. The North Dakota native spent two years at the esteemed Tamarind Lithography Workshop, which was begun in Los Angeles in 1960 by June Wayne, and worked for Editions Alecto and Petersburg Press in London before striking out on his own.
In 2002, to mark the 25th anniversary of Shark’s Ink, the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs sponsored a massive retrospective of more than 100 prints on which Shark and his assistants collaborated.
On view here are 20 works from the Lyons publisher, including “Crossing the River: Leaping,” a 2003 color lithograph by the extraordinary Chinese artist Hung Liu. With its delicate, watercolor-like ink washes and gently overlapping imagery, it conveys much of the nuance and expressive power of her paintings.
Also featured are selections from the Patton Print Shop, part of the nationally known Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, as well as Segura Publishing Co. in Tempe, Ariz., and White Wings Press in Chicago, and Hand Graphics in Santa Fe.
Highlights include Jenny Schmid’s two caricatured, posterlike color etchings, including “The Charmer”; Timothy Berry’s highly detailed color lithograph, “Restoration Repose”; and Joe Novak’s aquatint, “Recuerdos IV,” with its vaporous orange shapes hovering in a field of bright yellow.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Five Presses: Selected Works”
Through Aug. 28|Exhibition of original prints|Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd.|Free|9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays (720-898-7200 or arvadacenter.org)
