Silk and Feathers
G A L L E RY G U I D E
JUNE 21 – OCTOBER 6, 2019
Dividing her time between Northern Vermont and her native Australia, Sarah Amos is among a vanguard of artists devising conceptual and formal innovations in printmaking that transcend conventions and forge new meanings. BCA Center’s Unique Multiples surveys the past five years of Amos’ creative practice, beginning with a pivotal shift in 2014 when Amos moved from printing on paper to producing monumental images on fabric. Professionally trained as a collaborative master printer at the prestigious Tamarind Institute in New Mexico, Amos has spent more than two decades teaching and working with other artists to create print editions. She is highly skilled in various techniques, ranging from lithography and etching to monoprints and collagraphs. In her personal body of work, she explores the inherent qualities of her materials and process. Creating singular and unique prints, Amos combines collagraph, woodcut, appliqué, painting, drawing, and stitch work with felt and linen. These hybrid prints are a fusion of tradition and experimentation, upending conventional notions of printmaking and collapsing the boundaries between media. Unique Multiples encompasses a formative period in Sarah Amos’ evolution as an artist. Works from her Black Box Series and Lunette Series were created around the time when the artist received the Joan Mitchell Award in painting and sculpture. Concurrently, Amos was shifting away from working with paper due to its expense and size limitations and began to investigate other surfaces, such as canvas and linen. On a fateful trip to a local fabric store in 2014, the artist came upon a large bolt of acrylic felt that looked remarkably similar to a roll of Japanese paper. Realizing the exciting potential for this new discovery, Amos returned to her studio with several bolts of cream and gray felt and began printing on them. The outcome of this exploration is 39 Shillings, the earliest example of her collagraph on felt method. Consisting of an interplay of structural and organic shapes, 39 Shillings layers biomorphic imagery evoking natural forms, such as branching coral or insect mounds, with a central geometric abstraction printed directly on the felt and repeated as a mirror image on appliquéd fabric. Beginning with this pivotal work, Amos shifted her artistic vision in a radically new direction over the next several years. Amos could not have achieved the scale and textural quality of her hybrid prints without the collagraph process. She discovered the technique fifteen years ago while visiting a print studio in Montreal. The artist was drawn instantly to the simplicity and economy of the collagraph, as well as to its capacity to create significantly larger images using a lighter substrate – typically laminated cardboard – as opposed to metal. Amos makes each collagraph plate with an additive technique using carborundum, glue, grout, or found materials that are built and layered onto the plate’s surface. The resulting matrix is then inked
39 Shillings
and pressed several times to produce the final image. Due to the collagraph’s textured surface and selective inking, the artist can achieve remarkable tonal depth and impressive, multi-layered imagery. Unique Multiples features a group of five monumental, hybrid prints that veer away from suggestions of the cosmic and environmental realms towards that of the figurative. Blue Isabelle and The Arrival arrest our attention with their intrepid rhythms of design and color, heightened by ornate stitch work that conjures up elaborate headdresses or beaded crowns. Exploring materiality and memory, the artist’s richly patterned imagery is based on a confluence of visual sources including organic, scientific, and cultural motifs. Blue Isabelle exemplifies Amos’ investigation of the limits of pattern and ornamentation. She distills her wide-ranging interest in organic structures and decorative design to create a fascinating balance of implied figuration with embellished abstraction. The peripatetic, dotted lines found in earlier works, such as 39 Shillings, have coalesced into the bold, geometric shapes of free-form stitch work found in Blue Isabelle or The Arrival. These figurative elements are placed against an ornately patterned background of biomorphic forms suggestive of a natural brocade. Amos describes these abstractions as a type of private opera, where she sets the stage for her costumed performers to appear.
Amos’ practice is equally invested in mark making, especially the dot and dash, which recur throughout her hybrid prints. Her incorporation of stitched dots and broken lines, combined with the process of drawing or painting on her compositions (taboo in traditional printmaking), is another layer of mark making that captures the physicality and gesture of her creative process. Rudimentary dots and dashes, executed in bamboo thread in works such as I Stop, I Look, are distilled from Amos’ aesthetic investigations of indigenous designs and ceremonies found in multiple cultures from Southeast Asia to Oceania, the Balkans to sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas critics often exclusively attribute the dot to the influence of Australian aboriginal design, Amos’ marks suggest a more global cultural perspective. The artist describes herself as a “visual archeologist,” someone who studies the artifacts and history of civilizations to realize a deeper, personal understanding or connection to the past. Drawn to tribal and indigenous cultures, the artist is captivated by traditions of hand-made artifacts and their latent power to express universal ideas about society. Works such as Jute and Bones or Silk and Feathers, allude to the striking regalia that frequently accompany rituals. Emblematic of spirituality, ceremony, and interconnection, these timeless materials connect us to past traditions and societies, as well as to the natural world. Rather than appropriating a traditional motif from a specific culture, Amos synthesizes the marks, patterns, and designs she collects to create an imaginative and highly personal form of visual heritage. Hints of Home signifies the artist’s most recent shift in her artistic practice as she moves from the preciousness and ornamentation of her earlier works onto bold arrangements printed on raw canvas. Retaining some elements of her stitch work, Hints of Home and the Interchange Series emphasize simple, abstract forms constructed from collaged and painted configurations. Amos begins by painting on canvas and then layering collagraph over the painted surface. Enclosed within overlapping rectangles, these enigmatic shapes signify a more robust, sculptural language, reminiscent of designs found in Tlingit carvings or Japanese netsuke. In Citrus Gumbo Series, Amos further streamlines composition and pattern to return to creating works on paper. These smaller images are distinct: they contain only minimal elements of printmaking and emphasize drawing and painting. In these intimate investigations, Amos experiments equally with color and form. She especially pushes the limits of color to include brilliant combinations of citrine yellow and hot pink, juxtaposed with restful areas of
Citrus Gumbo Series
white, black, and grey. Amos describes Citrus Gumbo Series as her sketchbook or incubator where she conceptually resolves compositions before executing a larger, hybrid print. Unique Multiples embodies a creative paradox: how can an artist use the traditions of printmaking, with an emphasis on paper and multiple reproductions yet integrate those conventions with divergent disciplines, such as fiber arts and painting, to create unique and singular works of contemporary art? Innovative and experimental, Sarah Amos constructs an inventive visual language influenced by diverse cultures within a unified body of monumental, hybrid prints. She transcends traditional notions of printmaking as a way to surpass the boundaries between media and forge new meanings out of our collective pasts. By combining a multitude of artistic disciplines, materials, and visual traditions, Amos creates provocative works of art that are as distinctively personal as they are universal. Heather Ferrell Curator and Director of Exhibitions
CHECKLIST
39 Shillings, 2014 collagraph on felt with linen and bamboo thread 66" x 73"
Interchange Series #2, 2013 felt and collagraph with acrylic 20" x 16" $4,000
Black Box Series #3A, 2013 collagraph on paper with acrylic 20" x 16" $4,000
Interchange Series #5, #6, #7, #8, 2018 canvas, collagraph, felt 16" x 20" $4,000 each
Blue Isabelle, 2016 collagraph on felt with bamboo thread 84" x 66"
Jute and Bones, 2017 collagraph and bamboo thread on felt 60" x 40"
Citrus Gumbo Series From left to right, top row #15, 12, 11, 3, 5, 2019
Lunette Series #3, #14, #20, #38, 2013 collagraph on paper with acrylic 20" x 16" $4,000 each
From left to right, middle row #1, 6, 9, 13, 14, 2019 From left to right, bottom row #2, 4, 8, 7, 10, 2019 collagraph on paper with gouache 16" x 20� $4,000 each Double Dutch, 2018 collagraph on felt with bamboo thread 86" x 64" Dove’s Eye, 2019 collagraph on felt with bamboo thread 86" x 64" Hints of Home, 2019 collagraph on canvas 78" x 66" I Stop, I Look, 2016 collagraph on felt with bamboo thread 84" x 66"
Lunette Series #29, 2013 collagraph on linen with acrylic 20" x 16" $4,000 Middlepoint, 2014 collagraph on felt with bamboo thread and acrylic 66" x 78" Silk and Feathers, 2017 collagraph on felt with bamboo thread 60" x 40" The Arrival, 2017 collagraph on felt with bamboo thread 86" x 66"
All works Price Upon Request unless otherwise indicated.
BIOGRAPHY
Sarah Amos (b. 1965, Melbourne, Australia) is an artist and collaborative master printer. Her work employs multiple processes, combined with nontraditional materials, to challenge the contemporary boundaries of printmaking. Amos earned her BFA in printmaking from the Phillip Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia and her MFA from Johnson State College in Johnson, Vermont. In 1992, she trained at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico to become a Master Printer. Amos has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, most recently at the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia; the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art in California; the Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne, Australia; and Heather Gaudia Fine Art in New Canaan, CT. She has been an artist-in-residence at The Art Vault in Mildura in Victoria, Australia; the Santa Fe Arts Institute in New Mexico; the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in County Mayo, Ireland; and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. In 2014, Amos was recognized with an award from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She currently resides in East Fairfield, Vermont.
GALLERY
PUBLIC PROGRAMS FAMILY ART SATURDAY Saturday, June 22, July 27, August 24, 2019, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. BCA Center, 135 Church Street ART & CONVERSATION Thursday, July 10, 2019, 9:30-11:00 a.m. BCA Center, 135 Church Street
ARTIST AT WORK: SARAH AMOS Thursday, September 12, 2019, 6-7:30 p.m. BCA Center, 135 Church Street COLLAGRAPH PRINT WORKSHOP WITH SARAH AMOS Saturday and Sunday, September 14 and 15, 2019, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. BCA Studios, 405 Pine Street
Editorial assistance: Colin Storrs, Curatorial Assistant and Gallery Coordinator Barrie Knapp, Curatorial Intern
Sarah Amos: Unique Multiples is generously supported by Leunig’s Bistro & Café BCA Exhibitions are funded in part by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and Vermont Arts Council.
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