Introducing Sara Tabbert

Cullom Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of color woodcuts by Sara Tabbert.  For her first show at Cullom Gallery, Tabbert has incorporated her characteristic attention to the elemental beauty in natural forms of wood, water, ice, and stone, into a new series of prints based on the artist's recent trip along the famed Great Northern Railway, nicknamed The Highline.  Tabbert's series of ten reduction woodcuts considers the ‘little pieces of something’ sprinkled my human life amidst the stark topography and grandeur of America's Rocky Mountains and the Northern Great Plains.

In a nod to ukiyo-e landscape designs by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), Tabbert's views from Glacier Park, Montana to Fargo, North Dakota, along a well-known and linear route, recall the ukiyo-e master's Famous Views of the 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road.  Also in keeping with the format of many of Hiroshige's prints, Tabbert's Highline uses the tall and narrow paper size known as tanzaku or 'poem strip' (roughly 14 x 5 inches).  Whether hinting at a view through a cracked shoji screen, or capturing what the eye sees in a flash through the window of a speeding train, a landscape (by definition in the West, a horizontally-oriented view) seen in tanzaku format challenges our notions of perspective, scale, and scope, instead emphasizing the strata of a landscape's fore, mid, and background, as seen bottom to top.

Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Sara Tabbert received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from Grinnell College, Iowa, and her Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where she studied with Karen Kunc.  Sara Tabbert's prints and wood carvings were showcased in the solo exhibit, Near Water, at the Anchorage Museum, from December 5, 2008 - January 25, 2009.  Her prints are among public and corporate collections including the Anchorage Museum; Swedish Medical Center, Seattle; and Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska.

The Highline & other new work

November 5, 2009 - January 2, 2010

Cullom Gallery

313 Occidental Ave S

Seattle, WA  98104

206.919.8278

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Introducing Eva Pietzcker

I'm so pleased with my new winter exhibit at Cullom Gallery of Japanese woodblock prints by Berlin artist, Eva Pietzcker. This show of 17 color and black and white landscape prints (and one delightfully domestic still life of apples and geraniums) will open tomorrow night, February 5th, with a preview from 6 - 8 pm. If you are in Seattle, please come down and see Eva's prints in person!

With the new year, I'll be adding several additional contemporary artists to the mix at Cullom Gallery. As I've mentioned here before, I am keen to show my audience, though my exhibits and general offerings, artistic links from the present back to the olden days of Japanese prints and from the old back to the present and everything in between.

In Eva's prints, I see an exciting buzz between traditions of composition found in ukiyo-e landscape prints (and as a client suggested last week, maybe Huan Dynasty landscape painting?) and Eva's own modern and minimal, sometimes stylized, approach to landscape.

This group of prints covers the years 2003 to the present and includes prints produced during the artist's residencies in Japan and Canada, along with scenes of her own Berlin. (Pietzcker also spent some time in China on an independent study of traditional Chinese paper making techniques and in Indonesia for an artist's residency - both trips inspiring additional print designs.)

In a statement for Toronto's Open Studio's webiste, Eva wrote, "I try to omit 'unimportant' parts and to reveal the essences while reducing information- without killing off the vibrancy of the work. I try to achieve that by oscillating between simplicity and complexity, black-and-white and colour, abstraction and narration."

In 2001, she established the printmaking studio "drucktelle" with partner Miriam Zegrer (the studio has just recently closed) for the purpose of research into and teaching courses on printmaking techniques, with the aim of using non-toxic material as much as possible. Pietzcker continues teaching printmaking courses independently and at several art academies in Germany. Her prints have been shown in solo and group exhibits throughout Germany, the United States, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Poland, Canada, Japan, and Indonesia. Most recently in 2008 she was part of the California Society of Printmaker's exhibit in Pacific Grove, CA, (she's been a member since 2006); and exhibited as a member of the artist group ' Nagasawa Ten' in the exhibit, "A Time and a Place" which traveled to both Amsterdam's Grafisch Atelier, and Deco Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia. In 2007, Pietzcker served as visiting artist at Open Studio, Toronto, Canada, and at The Print Studio, Hamilton Canada. In 2003 and 2004 Pietzcker was Artist-in-Residence at Nagasawa Art Park, Japan and Tsuna-Cho, Japan, respectively.

The show will be featured in a special online exhibit (by tomorrow afternoon) one the gallery's website at www.cullomgallery.com. The exhibit will continue on the gallery walls through March 30, but hopefully, Eva's prints will become a perennial offering at this gallery!