Welcome to the Pittsburgh Print Group

The Pittsburgh Print Group (PPG) is an organization of artists who work in various approaches to fine art printmaking. Founded in 1972, PPG is dedicated to artistic excellence and the perpetuation of printmaking as an art form by providing its members with exhibition opportunities throughout the southwestern Pennsylvania region and tri-state area.

Exhibitions that have far reaching audiences combined with outreach and educational opportunities are PPG’s primary activities. Members develop proposals for exhibitions in private galleries, museums and other appropriate venues, and create educational events open to members and the public through demonstrations, artist talks and workshops.

Public Exhibitions & Events

Image Credits: Left - Stephanie Oplinger; Center - Stephanie Oplinger; Right - Tresa Varnerz

imPRESSions is a collaboration between the Pittsburgh Print Group and the Greensburg Art Center to promote the printmaking artform and showcase the modern-day printmaking works of their members.  The exhibition is open to the public, hosted at the Greensburg Art Center in Greensburg, PA. The opening reception will be held at the Greensburg Art Center and will include an awards ceremony and catered food and drinks. The exhibition opens with a public reception on September 14 and continues through October 19 at the Greensburg Art Center on Todd School Road in Greensburg, PA.

Rosemary Sovyak, president of the Greensburg Art Center, is excited to celebrate the installation of the Center’s first ever Printmaking exhibition. “The variety of techniques and the talent that has produced the artwork offers an avenue of a media that leads the viewer to a level of wonder and, perhaps, a new art form to pursue.” 

“To me, printmaking has always been the people’s art, bringing images out of the museum and into streets and homes,” says Jeremiah William McCarthy, Chief Curator at the Westmoreland Museum of American, who will be the awards juror for this exhibition. “I’m excited to see what themes occupy contemporary printmakers, and how they are advancing the medium.”

Image Credits: Left - Abagail Franzen-Sheehan; Right - AK Kurtz

Myth

SUSTAIN, INNOVATE, TRANSFORM

DEHAZE Exhibition

Over time a thick haze builds across the screenprinter’s silk. Ghost images of editions passed collect as a screen lives its many coatings and serves the printmaker as a fundamental tool for duplication and dissemination. These scars stained deep into the fiber celebrate the form, function, and history of screenprinting, yet as they grow these subtle reminders of images that have come and gone slowly interfere with the use of the tool itself. Eventually, the screen is unable to transmit a new image in its intended form, becoming blocked and inoperable, losing its very function. However, all is not lost, and the screen need not be relegated to the garbage pile.

Dehazing is a caustic process, burning and melting these histories away with powerful chemistry, giving new life to the silkscreen. Though the process of dehazing is in some ways violent, even dangerous to the printmaker without proper protection, it is a fundamental part of the screen’s lifecycle - a death and rebirth of this delicate but resilient object.

This curated exhibition celebrating the art and craft of screenprinting is open free-of-charge to all current members of the Pittsburgh Print Group and PULLPROOF STUDIO. In addition, we encourage the screenprinting community at large to apply for inclusion in this exhibition for a modest $5 entry fee.

DEHAZE is intended to be interpreted freely by the artist - perhaps the work showcases a distant memory, a new and exciting development, a scar, ghost, or an act of redemption. Ultimately, the medium is the message, and this poetry of function exists regardless of the content of the image. This exhibition is also open to both new works or archived. Submitted works will be reviewed and selected by founding members of the screenprinting collective PullProof Studio. The Opening Reception of this work will be a public exhibition at the PullProof Studio Gallery, located in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood and a part of the monthly First-Friday Unblurred art walk. Works may be offered for sale to the public, but it is not a requirement.

Ginger Brooks Takahashi

Digital Artist Talk
Wednesday, August 25th
7:00-8:00PM

Please join us on June 30th for Yoshiko Shimano's artist talk. Yoshiko is a Japanese-born and Albuquerque, NM-based printmaker and faculty member at the University of New Mexico. Her dramatic large-scale installation prints are created using multiple layers and print processes. In addition to her studio practice, Shimano will share with us the print-based outreach projects she organizes in Albuquerque and internationally.

Japanese-born, Yoshiko Shimano challenges to transform the paper so it no longer speaks as “paper”, but has a density of physical presence that is one with its imagery. By using many different printmaking marks, she wishes to unify existing mediums and layers into a seamless language. When hung in one space, her large-scale installation prints become environmental works that interact with the architecture and create a new atmosphere. She embraces an artist’s responsibilities within society to expand beyond studio practices or gallery presentations. She has offered many local and international outreach projects and made prints for various minority groups and victims of natural disasters with her students through the Department of Art at the University of New Mexico. She received her B.F.A. degree from California College of the Arts and M.F.A. degree from Mills College in Oakland, California. Shimano currently lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. To review her portfolio, please visit https://yoshikoshimano.com

Forging Ahead, a printmaking-focused exhibition celebrating community, perseverance, and accomplishment during trying times. Forging Ahead will be open from March 18th - May 1st, 2021 at the Brew House Association in Pittsburgh, PA. The exhibition will be open to the public 3 days a week with limited occupancy for the attendees and Brew House staff’s safety. 

Kathryn Polk (b.1952 in Memphis, Tennessee) studied painting at the Memphis Academy of Art (1970) and Memphis State University (1970-1973). Polk's southern heritage and strict religious upbringing are a major source of inspiration in her work. Her art is best known for personal narratives referencing the past to the present depicting humorous, visual memories and thoughts through the eyes of all the women in her family. In 2002, she began working with traditional stone lithography.

Her lithographs can be found in permanent print collections throughout the world in China, New Zealand, South Korea, Wales, France and Argentina as well as in museums throughout the United States. She and her printmaker husband Andrew Polk are co-owners of L VIS Press, a lithography print studio dedicated to the development of more eco-friendly stone lithography techniques. L VIS Press has recently relocated to Solsberry, Indiana (near Bloomington) from Tucson, Arizona.

Jenny Gibbs is the Executive Director of the IFDPA and the IFPDA Foundation. Prior to joining the IFPDA, Gibbs most recently held the positions of Director of the MA in Art Business program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and Executive Director of the Chicago-area Elmhurst Art Museum. As ED of the Elmhurst Art Museum, she led the institution through a period of significant growth with major gifts and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, developing the vision and planning for the restoration of Mies van der Rohe’s McCormick House (1952). Before joining Elmhurst Art Museum Gibbs headed the graduate programs at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Gibbs has also worked with Bard College as the Executive Director of the Lacoste School of the Arts in France. Gibbs began her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at Christie's as an old master painting specialist.

Watch our conversation with Jenny Gibbs below!

Read our July 2020 Newsletter HERE!

Distance Between
Real and Imagined

Pittsburgh International Airport

February 2020

works by
Doug Eberhardt
Arron Foster
Tressa Jones
Zach Fitchner

This small installation is meant to be an intimate dialogue between the artists and public in the hopes of a shared exploration and interpretation of a place where aircraft take off and land, with buildings for passengers and flight management.

The prints speak to the idea of time and space through the illumination of color and spatial dynamics. Doug Eberhardt’s work contains provocative floating geometric constructions mimicking architectural elements seen in the Pittsburgh International Airport. The transcendental nature of his prints are meant to create a visual parallel of the expansive skies and distant landscapes surrounding the airport. Tressa Jones investigates physiological and psychological experiences of absence, loss, and uncertainty, she looks to place and seeks metaphors in human built and natural environments. The sky is a common element in many of Jones’ works. Zach Fitchner spent much of his childhood split between two places due to his parent’s divorce. His memories of airports and airplanes are ever present in his psyche and in his work. Arron Foster investigates geographical places and their physical features that serve as sites of memory. His work is arrived at intuition, research based approach to observing, studying and documenting specific location.

The Morgan Conservatory (MC) has generously invited all members of the Pittsburgh Print Group (PPG) to each create one work of art to be shown in their gallery with other selected artists that have worked with the Morgan Conservatory. The exhibition will also be on the schedule during the Mid America Print Conference to be held at Kent State University. Buses will be provided to see the show from the conference. At the end of the Morgan Conservatory venue, the exhibition will be transported back to Pittsburgh where it will be shown at the Brew House Gallery. 

  The artwork should be made with Morgan paper and reflect the Morgan Conservatory’s mission of integrating sustainable practices with methods into papermaking, book arts and printmaking. PPG will join the wave of awareness centered around saving the planet Earth. We also invite you to think about the role of self-care and healing in the life of an artist. To be sustainable, people engaged in art have an obligation to take care of themselves.

To participate, please download and complete the Prospectus and Artist Contract documents below.
Return your completed documents to pittsburghprintgroup@gmail.com

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts & Media presents

This year’s PCAM exhibit features 6 Pittsburgh Print Group members!

Join the facebook event HERE

The Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media is thrilled to announce this year's Guild Member New Collective exhibition, What Have We Done, featuring art work by Issac Bower, Michelle Browne, Doug Eberhardt, Gerry Florida, Arron Foster, Sarika Goulatia, Scott Hunter, Maria Kretschman, Maria Mangano, Angela Pasquale, Aaron Regal, Laura Tabakman & Matt Van Asselt.

Opening Reception
6300 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232
Friday, November 15th
6-9pm

includes a special performance by Women of Visions member, Betty Douglas and her Jazz Trio.

December gallery hours
Sunday 12pm – 5pm
Monday 10am – 5pm
Tuesday - Thursday 10am – 7pm
Friday & Saturday 10am – 5pm.

Artist-led Exhibit Tour
Thursday, December 5, 6-8pm

On View through December 31, 2020

Witness

The Pittsburgh Print Group, in collaboration with G1/CW, is pleased to announce a five-person exhibition featuring works by Casey Connelly, Katie Kaplan, Adam Linn, Joe Lupo and Laura Zurowski.

October 18 – 25, 2019
Gallery One/ Collective Works, 4106 Howley Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15224

·      Opening Reception: Friday, October 18, 7-9pm

 ·      Artists Talk with Katie Kaplan & Adam Linn, Saturday, October 18, 1:00 – 2:30 pm Anthropomorphism and Esotericism through a Queer Lens 

·      Tantalizing Soiree: Friday, October 25, 7-9pm
Refreshments, Premier of Pittsburgh Print Group Portfolio, Silent Auction, Make your own Glow in the Dark Prints with Doug Eberhardt, and City Steps Quiz with Mis.steps, Laura Zurowski

 All events are free and open to the public

 To bare witness is at the fundamental core of an artist’s practice – a witness offers an assumed certainty and reliability. The works included in this show offer a glimpse into the realities of five artists exploring their role as both observer and participant. This exhibit recounts their certainties, questions, identities, surroundings, and histories, providing documentation and narratives that are both deeply personal and inherently shared among all of us.

About the artists

Casey Connelly
screen-prints and animations bear witness to his childhood milieu - farcical provincialism. He reconstructs the community of his past based on the present understanding of his upbringing. Connelly investigates the lure and danger of TV home shopping networks, regional print and broadcasted advertising turned peculiar, and a cynical view of religiosity. His goal is not to critique, nor is it to glorify a retreat into a familiar provincialism. Instead, Connelly aims to balance the bizarre and the familiar to create a recognizable portrait of a community in stasis, a vestigial culture.

Adam Linn
mezzotint prints and drawings archive his childhood fixation of queer identity informed by internet subculture. His drawings and prints amalgamate the strangeness that surrounded stifled obsessions from a closeted queer childhood integrated with the corporeal abstraction of anthropomorphism. The works flirt with perception and lick the tip of the grotesque.

Joe Lupo
The idea of a witness assumes certainty and reliability. However, his carefully crafted screen-prints and woodcuts offer more questions than answers and create uncertainty. Lupo explores deconstructionist and postmodern theories of how to create meaning and how we understand signifiers and language. He deconstructs comic books to challenge fixed narratives, binary definitions and denotation.

Katie Kaplan
is part of a smart generation of young artists to reclaim the femininity of a new wave of feminism work. Kaplan rescues subverted girl culture through a queer femme lens. Her sewn and printed textile banners elevate and embrace the decorative, the ultra-girly, and the magical aspects of femininity, challenging the notion that femininity is contrived, wasteful, disposable and frivolous. Evoking both history and fantasy, the flags and banners serve as a proclamation, a celebration of femme power.  Her personal narrative draws from mythology, art history, western esotericism, religious iconography, girl culture, herbalism and plant folklore.

Laura Zurowski
explores our missed connections with Pittsburgh’s city steps through analog printing using a Polaroid and an old risograph machine to mysterious effect. Each stairway brings personal reflection documented through print and delicate journaling. She has documented 350 stairways- close to her halfway mark for the viewer to create associations and narratives. Her Mis.Steps project has brought her hopeful feeling of prosperities for the residents old and new to Pittsburgh.

Read our Summer 2019 Newsletter here!

Summer 2019
Papermaking Workshop at
The Morgan Conservatory

Pittsburgh Print Group had the pleasure of participating in a guild papermaking workshop at the enchanting Morgan Conservatory this summer!

Be on the lookout for a collaborative exhibition coming up with MC opening Fall of 2020

The Morgan Conservatory is the largest arts center in the United States dedicated to every facet of papermaking, book arts and letterpress printing and to cultivating the talents of established and emerging artists. An international destination that is free and open to the public, the Morgan Conservatory is a working studio, gallery, gathering place for the community, educational hub and purveyor of some of the finest handmade papers in the world.

Since opening to the public in 2008, the Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory and Educational Foundation has been a rising star in the Cleveland arts community and the papermaking world. The Morgan Conservatory’s 15,000 square foot converted industrial space is home to professional and aspiring artists dedicated to the ancient art of papermaking, book arts and letterpress printing. The Conservatory has been transformed into an art facility with studios; an 85′ double-wall gallery; a space for community events; and a unique kozo garden was installed to grow fiber for specialized papers.

Read our Winter 2019 Newsletter here!

TALKING PRINTS presents Chuck Olson
“On the Edge of Extinction: Making Modern Multiplate Lithographs”

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
Simmons Hall, October 28th, 1pm
6300 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232

In 2015, Chuck Olson was offered the opportunity through West Texas A & M University to return to printmaking. As a renowned American painter, Olson was selected by the West Texas A & M University to work with the master printmaker Michael Raburn of Amarillo Texas, one of America’s foremost lithographic printmakers. This began his two-year journey into traditional, multiplate lithography that has yielded five large prints that capture the essence of painting in look and deliberation necessary to realize an image. Each print is an iconic image representative of Olson’s well-known paintings. Olson’s presentation will detail the entire printmaking process in lecture, image and video along with his reflections on what he has learned about the new virtues of traditional printmaking. TALKING PRINTS is free and open to the public.

Chuck Olson has long been a member of the Pittsburgh visual arts scene, from his initial representation at the Kingpitcher Gallery on South Craig Street to to his current representation at James Gallery in the West End. Olson’s work was featured in the important exhibit, Seven Artists: Pittsburgh Today, curated by the late John Caldwell and installed at the Carnegie Museum of Art (1984). In 2013, he was awarded the status of Master Visual Artist for the city of Pittsburgh in with an exhibition at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and an archive established at the Heinz Regional History Museum. In addition to his work being seen throughout the city, he has shown in New York for over 30 years as well as in galleries and museums throughout the United States, France, Italy and Japan. Chuck Olson is currently (and since 1976) a Professor of Art at Saint Francis University, Loretto, PA. He maintains a working studio in Indiana, PA, with gallery representation in the United States and in Europe.

To learn more about Chuck Olson, visit www.chuckolsonpaintings.com

Under the Blankets - Printmakers Together is an exhibition of recent work by 29 Pittsburgh Print Group members and 29 invited printmakers from the tri-state region of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Participating PPG members chose a printmaker from an extensive list of accomplished artists to exhibit alongside the group, providing an opportunity for members to connect with exceptional printmakers in  neighboring rust belt states.  This exhibit will forge a creative dialogue that expands artistic vision and strengthens the ties that bring printmakers, the broader artist community, and the public together.

This exhibition showcases a broad spectrum of  printmaking techniques and approaches that include traditional silkscreen, intaglio, lithography, relief, letterpress, monoprint and monotype,  as well as installation, artist books, zines, and  experimental prints that combine video, animation, and sound. Many of the prints in the exhibition focus on contemporary issues and global concerns, while other works explore personal and spiritual themes. 

A lecture and guided gallery talk by Imin Yeh, Exhibition Project Advisor, will be presented at our Opening Reception on Friday, May 4th, 7:00 – 8:00 PM at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.  Exhibiting artists as well as the public will have an opporunity to view the exhibit and to interact with some of the finest printmakers in the region.

Exhibition photographs provided by Marc Snyder and Aaron Regal

Special Thanks to our sponsors

Pittsburgh Center for the Arts/Pittsburgh Filmmakers
 The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
The Fine Foundation
 Jack Buncher Foundation
Dollar Bank

More special thanks to our exhibition organizers!

Leslie Golomb Exhibition Co-Chair
Aaron Regal Exhibition Co-Chair
Sharon Wilcox President
Paula Garrick Klein  Secretary
Rachel Saul Rearick  Media and PR
Imin Yeh Exhibition Project Advisor
Jessica Brown PCA Gallery Programs Manager
Thomas Brown PCA Lead Art Installer
Hannah Altman PCA Art Installer
Gwen Sadler  PCA Art Installer
Maritza Mosquera Community Engagement
Michelle Brown Community Engagement
Nancy Flury Carlson Community Engagement
JoAnne Bates Community Engagement
Jennifer Rockage McGhee Community Engagement

LOCAL PITTSBURGH ARTICLE

An exciting public roundtable discussion featuring local arts administrators Fran Flaherty, Charlotte Ka, Duncan MacDiarmid, Maritza Mosquera, Anne Mulgrave, Rachel Saul Rearick, Errol "Mobutu" Reynolds, Aaron Regal, Zena Ruiz, Fitzhugh Shaw, Tresa Varner and Marcel Walker

Thursday, June 14th
6:30-8:30pm
Pittsburgh Filmmakers

Free and open to the public – no reservations required

American sign language interpreters provided

In cities around the globe, there is an exciting movement afoot to share ideas and models that help connect artists more deeply with their communities. This roundtable discussion led by Rachel Saul Rearick, Arts and Culture Manager, Pittsburgh International Airport will focus on relationship building and the core of the relationship as mutuality. While audience development works to have members of the public feel a relationship with the arts as created and/or presented by the artist or organization, community engagement seeks to develop relationships that potentially transform both individuals external to the arts and the art itself.

Learn from Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, Anne Mulgrave, Manager of Grants and Accessibility about grant opportunities and reimbursement that provide arts and culture organizations to conduct outreach programs, accommodate patrons with disabilities and current initiatives. Also listen to lesser known small arts guilds and organizations that work quietly but efficiently toward social change.

Special Thanks to our sponsors at Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Fine Foundation, Jack Buncher Foundation, and Dollar Bank! 

FINDING OUR MOUNTAIN
EDUCATION AND OUTREACH

We write for the same reason that we walk,
talk, climb mountains or swim the
oceans – because we can. We have
some impulse within us that makes us
want to explain ourselves to other
human beings. That’s why we paint,
that’s why we dare to love-someone
because we have the impulse to
explain who we are.
Maya Angelou

Finding our Mountain, is a community engagement program of the Pittsburgh Print Group led by Maritza Mosquera, an artist, educator and community-transformation partner. This project was designed specifically for a group of mentors and mentees associated with Be a Middle School Mentor – United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania and meets Pennsylvania Academic Standards for the Arts and Humanities Department of Education.

A school pre-visit was led by Mosquera to introduce the program. Mentor and mentees completed a language and poetry lesson followed by a drawing session that would later be used in conjunction with a printmaking project. The next week mentors and mentees came to the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts for a lively building self-esteem presentation by Anne Mulgrave, Manager of Grants and Accessibility, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council. This was followed by a
tour of Under the Blankets, Printmakers Together guided by exhibiting artists. And finally, an inky session in the studio took place where mentors and mentees combined their language and art skills to create an original print inspired by Maya Angelou’s poem.

“We all have the impulse to explain who we are” and the Pittsburgh Print Group would like to personally thank Rev. Dr. T. Charles Howell IV, Mentor Director of Mount Ararat Community Activity Center for his tireless leadership to guide others toward mutuality.