The Hardy Gallery presents Focus on Five, a print show curated by Christine Style. This show explores a deeper view of prints by five artists from “The Devil’s Dictionary” Vox Populi printmaking exchange project. Exhibiting artists include Barry Roal Carlsen, Rachael Griffin, Mary Hood, Jayne Reid Jackson, and Andy Rubin.

Inspired by “The Devil’s Dictionary” print exchange, Christine Style who is Professor Emeritus of Art & Design at UW-Green Bay, selected five artists who work in a variety of printmaking techniques, including lithography, screen printing, mezzotint, photogravure, and monotype for this exhibition.

In addition, the entire portfolio from “The Devil’s Dictionary” is on view, which includes 28 artists who were randomly assigned a letter or symbol and then chose a word that resonated with them on some level, inspired by the work of American Civil War soldier, journalist, and writer, Ambrose Bierce.

Bierce's witty and satirical glossaries of words appeared in newspapers and publications around the turn of the 20th century. The writings were gathered into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 and then in a more complete version titled The Devil's Dictionary in 1911.

On Exhibit: September 3–October 9, 2022.

Barry Roal Carlsen

I’m currently involved in two bodies of work. The first is a continuing series of paintings that focus on landscape, memory, and sense of place. Landscape and experience have a way of shaping people. The sense of place is powerful; it can express feelings of belonging, separation, distance, and loss. Landscape as an avatar.

I’m increasingly involved in creating a body of work that focuses more directly on personal relationships and the human condition. This series of predominately print-based works involves a wider set of graphic motifs and relies heavily on the assets that printmaking provides.

Richael Griffin

Rachael Griffin is a printmaker and painter from Ohio who is currently based in Madison, Wisconsin. Her work, predominantly richly layered monotypes, always comes back to the human appetite. These images of fruit, pastries, and meat are often icons of American culture, but they also consider the mysterious notion of attraction and taste. Pleasure, humor, and meditation are all constants that can carry on throughout Griffin’s daily and artistic practice. She finds particular pleasure in the inherent process of printmaking and the luminous, spontaneous possibilities layers of ink have to offer.

Griffin earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, following her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio University. Following her studies, she was an Artist in Residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center of the Arts in Nebraska City and has since then become an active member of Vox Populi Print Collective and the Monotype Guild of New England. Griffin exhibits her work locally, nationally, and internationally. She is the Administrative Manager at Tandem Press, a publisher of fine art prints, where she is surrounded by some of the most stunning prints by world renowned artists. She enjoys sharing her love for printmaking by teaching classes and workshops throughout the community.

Mary Hood

My current research exists in the luminous space between day and night, the twilight hours, where imagination is unquestioned and empowered to construct new a worldview. This work investigates utopian and dystopian constructions; exploring the boundaries between the idealized and abstracted spaces of an immaterial world inhabited by animals. I use myth to reconstruct time, space, narrative, and experience, to challenge the unspoiled and harmonious wilderness devoid of the impact of human civilization, drawing new boundaries for a collective cultural understanding. My narratives allude to themes within contemporary culture that express a political, social, and/or personal point of view, using animals as a metaphor for human behaviors, discretions, and means of survival. Using the traditional dust grain method of photogravure for each image represented here, there are two intaglio plates are inked ala poupee in various colors and printed directly on top of each other wet into wet.

Jayne Reid Jackson

A Wisconsin native, Jayne grew up in Milwaukee and Port Washington and attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating with a BS in Art. She began her work in intaglio and monotype after later joining a private print workshop, AGB Graphics, and currently works out of her home studio in Madison, WI. She is known internationally for her mezzotint work, in which she is entirely self-taught through books and internet sources.

Her work is consistently accepted into national and international print exhibitions, both juried and invitational. She is a member of several print societies across the US and exhibits regularly in their member exhibitions. Memberships include Society of American Graphic Artists, The Boston Printmakers, Mid-American Print Club, Los Angeles Print Society, Southern Graphics, International Mezzotint Society, Vox Populi Print Collective and Wisconsin Visual Artists.

Her work has been included in the International Mezzotint Festival in Russia every biennial since its conception in 2011 and her mezzotints have been invited to be exhibited in Mexico, Canada, Russia, India, China, Australia and throughout Europe. Her work is included in several large public collections in the US and Internationally.

Andy Rubin

After teaching Printmaking at Indiana University and as Master Printer at Tandem Press for more than 25 years, I have participated in a world of printmaking that has seen many changes, both stylistically and technically, from traditional multi-run color images, to piece work designed for large scale installations. In those years I have met, worked with and been influenced by over 60 national and internationally known artists. Their divergent approaches and styles have all had three things in common… the artist’s dedication to the seriousness of the task at hand, a confidence of vision, and an enduring work ethic. These are the attributes that have influenced me the most as both an artist and printer. Over the years my commitment to printmaking as a medium of expression has been unwavering and is a testament to Tandem Press’s success.

In 2009 I started a body of work inspired by the drawings of Saul Steinberg and Ben Shahn, the architecture of Antoni Gaugi and Frank Gehry, and the post cubist imagery of the American abstract movement of the 1940-50’s. Their whimsical line, cubist shapes and color sensibilities inform my work, which is rooted in this same abstraction of architecture, shapes and doodles that, in turn, become landscapes of my imagination.

I am aware that these works (being landscape in nature) speak to the ideas about the human manipulation of the environment and our ecology. I do not set out to make politicized images, but rather envelop myself in the work at hand, responding to the image, and making decisions based on what I see on the page.