A show of new prints by Rachel Gross will open on Friday, May 6, 2012. There will be an opening reception from 6-8pm on that night with refreshments and live music. Her work will be exhibited through May 31, 2012.Rachel Gross is an artist and printmaker living in White River Junction, Vermont. She grew up in Swarthmore, PA and attended Oberlin College where she majored in Religion and Studio Art. Rachel received her MFA in Printmaking from Tyler School of Art. She has taught printmaking, drawing and design at Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA. She is currently a faculty and board member of Two Rivers Printmaking Studio.
"I think of my prints as spaces to enter with the suggestion of landscape and essential architectural forms. Both the positive and negative shapes combine to form a sense of space and an illusion of depth. The new prints in this show combine woodblock relief printing with hand-painted elements. I have cut individual shapes out of wood and then juxtaposed them on the paper to create separate facets of a form. The transparency of the printing process creates one type of space, while the opacity of the painted shapes suggests another.
In many ways the process of printmaking, the suspension of control when the print goes through the press, the separation of multi-colored images into individual plates, the dialogue between plate and paper, has directly informed the content of this work. Working with layers, and color separations has made me think about how to construct a sense of space with flat forms. Having a matrix allows me to repeat forms, flipping the plates to create variations of a motif."
Image: Birds of Paradise
