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printmaking

Curator's Corner

World Bicycle Day: Josef Müller-Brockmann

Tuesday, June 3, 2025 | Karl Cole

Starting in the late 1800s, posters began to be designed by fine artists, and what ensued what has been called the Poster Renaissance. After World War II, Swiss artists developed the International Typ ...

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Curator's Corner

Gem of the Month: Ryōhei Tanaka

Monday, June 2, 2025 | Karl Cole

My gem of the month for June is a fantastic printmaker from Japan, Ryōhei Tanaka. If you ever want to teach a lesson about use of line to depict nature, this artist fills the bill for imagery. His ama ...

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Curator's Corner

National Skilled Trades Day: Jacob Lawrence

Wednesday, May 7, 2025 | Karl Cole

National Skilled Trades Day was established in 2019 by the National Day Calendar and City Machine Technologies, Inc. Skilled workers are employed in a variety of fields and positions that can be perso ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Antonio Frasconi

Monday, April 28, 2025 | Karl Cole

Antonio Frasconi is an internationally known woodcut artist. He has published hundreds of prints and illustrated many books. Although much of his work has registered political protest, his subjects ra ...

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Curator's Corner

National Pet Day: Isoda Koryūsai

Friday, April 11, 2025 | Karl Cole

National Pet Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated on April 11. It was founded 2005/2006 by animal advocate and pet and family lifestyle expert Colleen Paige. The day is dedicated to all types of pe ...

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Curator's Corner

National Tweed Day: Otto Baumberger

Thursday, April 3, 2025 | Karl Cole

This PKZ (department store) poster typifies the "object poster" genre. The object to be marketed is presented in extreme close-up, either in photo-realistic or almost abstract fashion. Text ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Minami Keiko

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 | Karl Cole

Keiko Minami was a sōsaku hanga (creative print) artist, a group of printmakers (primarily woodcut) who created the drawing, carved the woodblock, and printed the image, as opposed to the traditional ...

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Curator's Corner

Black History Month: Woodruff, Lewis, Jennings

Monday, February 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

My celebration of Black History Month continues with three more artists who are very important in the history of art—Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, and Wilmer Jennings. They represent the divergen ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Shimizu Seifu

Monday, February 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

The Chinese had a legend of the brave carp who swam against the current on the Yellow River to mate, and few were courageous enough to swim over the Dragon Gate waterfall. Those that did turned into d ...

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Curator's Corner

Visualizing Cold in Works of Art

Monday, January 27, 2025 | Karl Cole

It probably does not need saying by now, but the last week has been quite cold in New England. I thought it might be interesting to see how artists visually interpret the idea of “cold.”&n ...

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Curator's Corner

Humor in Art Since the 1500s

Monday, January 13, 2025 | Karl Cole

Now that winter has set in with a vengeance, I think it is the perfect time to look at some art that can elicit a smile. ...

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Curator's Corner

Gem of the Month: Shirō Kasamatsu

Monday, October 28, 2024 | Karl Cole

Ukiyo-e was a woodblock print aesthetic that was popular from the late 1600s to the mid 1800s. The genre developed a visual vocabulary that documented the entertainments of Japanese urban centers, par ...

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Curator's Corner

Seeing Stars: Vija Celmins

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 | Karl Cole

The recent eclipse gave me a hankering for some art that is space oriented. I naturally thought of these prints by Vija Celmins. I’ve always been amazed by the patience that her brand of re ...

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Curator's Corner

Hispanic Heritage Month: Antonio Frasconi

Tuesday, October 10, 2023 | Karl Cole

Like graphic artists in Mexico during the mid-1900s, Antonio Frasconi was a tireless chronicler of poor and underserved people—first depicting those of Uruguay, where he was raised, and later am ...

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Curator's Corner

Hispanic Heritage Month: Manuel Manilla

Monday, October 2, 2023 | Karl Cole

The rich tradition of satiric graphic arts in Latin America reaches back to Mexico in the late 1700s. At that time, caricatures of skeletons (called calavera) were adopted by the satirical press as&nb ...

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Curator's Corner

Hispanic Heritage Month: Galo Galecio

Monday, September 25, 2023 | Karl Cole

During the early to mid-1900s, many Central and South American artists gradually developed schools of modernist art, moving away from the domination of Spanish styles that had endured in art academies ...

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