Opening Reception: First Thursday, September 3, 6-8 p.m.
"Saturday After" artist talk: September 5, 12:00
Anne Appleby's new "prints" are actually not so much editioned as they are serialized as similar objects. Relating to how Appleby's paintings form a strict grid of 1 - 6 wood panels, she has worked with Wildwood Press in St. Louis to make squares and rectangles of handmade paper. Each "panel" consists of two sheets of roughly textured handmade paper, each printed front and back with different colors that saturate the sheet, pushing against each other creating a subtle surface of intermingled color. The two sheets laid over one another suggest the subtly nuanced differences between the edges and centers of her painted surfaces. Color from the lower sheet also peeks through voids in the top sheet; the extravagantly deckled edge reveals color as well. This is printmaking at its best in the sense that the artist has used printing processes to enlarge the scope of her unique work rather than simply reproduce it.
The single panel work titled "Stone" depicts, as the artist suggests, "a limestone deposit anywhere. I was thinking about Lake Huron and the Niagara escarpment." The four-panel work, "Sweet Pea," suggests "these lovely perennial peas at my home in Helena...I love their fragrance and the fragility of the flowers." The colors of her print reveals the plant's life cycle from the dark brown of the seed, through the various greens and yellows of its leaves, to the soft pink of its flower.