It’s going to be a busy summer for Tacoma printmaker, Janet Marcavage, who is participating in exhibitions from New York City to Port Townsend, WA. Sandwiched into her coast-to-coast show schedule is an intriguing new Spaceworks installation, “Fabrications”, which will open at the Woolworth Building in Tacoma in mid-July.
“My installation celebrates the topography of textile pattern imprinted upon daily life and stems from my long-term investigation of printmaking’s visual systems,” she says. Her printed imagery is “inspired by everyday patterns used on a multitude of items from tablecloths and baby clothes to button-down shirts for men and women. I enjoy the way that these patterns shift meaning based on the color and the form in which they take, such as the form of a table, girl, man or laundry pile.
“Rooted in printmaking’s historical language of image construction, yet contemporary in application, the lines in the installation are optical, rather than subsumed elements in the image. The simplicity of repeated line is countered by the complexity of its shifting at the folds, abstracting and unifying my experience as a wife, mother, printmaker, and educator.”
Marcavages’s materials will include found striped textiles, bundled and suspended; and screenprinted windows and paper collaged in space.
If you’re in New York City between now and July 27, 2012, you can seen one of her recent screenprints in the International Print Center’s “New Prints 2012 / Summer Exhibition”, selected by Shahzia Sikander. The IPCNY is located at 508 West 26th St., Room 5A.
Her work will be included in the “Printmaker’s Hand II” at the Northwind Arts Center in Port Townsend, WA, July 6-29, 2012. The opening reception is Sat., July 7 from 5:30-7 pm. On July 8 at 1 pm there will be a gallery talk given by juror, Sam Davidson. Northwind Arts Center is located at 2409 Jefferson St. in Port Townsend.
Marcavage’s Spaceworks installation at the Woolworth Building, 11th & Broadway in Tacoma, will run mid-July through mid-October.