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| Green Ocean, etching and chine colle, 36 x24" |
This past weekend, I attended First Friday’s ARTScrawl at New Grounds Print Workshop and Gallery featuring an etching exhibition by Pamela Wesolek. In this new body of work, Wesolek fuses abstract and botanical elements. The colors reference the botanical’s personality and support the energy driving the abstractions. Her intention was to make a gallery space ripe with “Chroma,” or color, and for the viewer to be led by the color into the details of the work. Wesolek says, “I felt strongly about using color as the theme because it seems true to the season of spring when the black and white world of winter dramatically reinvents itself.”
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| Horses Tails |
The highlight of the evening was an etching demonstration of “Horses Tails” by Wesolek. She began by describing the process of inscribing the copper plates with a variety of techniques, using archaic dental tools. Wesolek then coated the copper plate with a water base Akua lamp black ink and wiped the top surface clean with a starched cheesecloth, leaving ink only in the etched lines. The plate was then laid face up on the press bed, covered with Mitsuyama paper from Japan and Mulberry paper from Thailand. The felt flaps of the press were laid on top of the paper and then hand cranked through the press with enormous pressure transferring the inked areas to the paper.
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| Perennial Nature, etching and chine colle, 24 x 15" |
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| Nova, etching and chine colle, 24 x 18" |
Wesolek was born in Menomonie, Wisconsin. She graduated from St. Olaf College with a BFA in 1998. In addition to being a studio artist with New Grounds for the past fourteen years, Wesolek has exhibited her work in Chenaii, India, Toronto, Canada, Tokyo, Japan and Nantes, France. Wesolek also has major art collections at Proyecto Ace, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Wolverhampton College, Woverhampton, UK. She is also an avid hiker, a mother and a life-long observer of nature.
Pamela Wesolek’s exhibition Chroma will hang through March 29th at New Grounds Print Workshop & Gallery, 3812 Central Avenue, SE, Suite 100 B, Albuquerque, NM 87108, (505) 268-8952, www.newgroundsprintshop.com.
