Sherway Gardens' Gallery in the Garden: Natural and Wilde II February 24, 2009

Celebrate International Women’s Day (March 8th) with a visit to an exhibition of artwork by twelve award winning women printmakers in Sherway Gardens’ (Hwy 427 & the QEW) current Gallery in the Garden exhibit entitled Natural and Wilde II. Work by artists Margaret Clifford, Peggy Drew, Theresa Ngan-Liu, Jean MacMillan, Rena Sava, Carole Sisto, Pat Staton, Brenda Sturino, Dorothy Wilde, Lily Yamaguchi, Edith Young and Carol Zachar will be on display until March 28, 2009. For more information call 416-621-1070 or visit www.sherwaygardens.ca.

“Every two years, the Etobicoke Art Group Printmakers put together a themed exhibition showcasing their best ‘impressions’ in original print form,” states Kathleen Haushalter; Curator, Sherway Gardens Gallery in the Garden. “This year was a celebration of the work of one member, Dorothy Wilde, who is widely admired for her creativity, tenacity and motivation as an artist in both ceramic and print at the age of 90.”

Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, most often on paper but also on other materials. Each print is an original work of art known as an ‘impression’. A series of works printed from a single plate are each signed and numbered to form a limited edition.

Prints are created from a single original surface known as a matrix. These can include plates of metal, usually copper or zinc for engraving or etching; stone, used for lithography; blocks of wood for woodcuts, linoleum for linocuts and fabric plates for screen-printing. A single print can be the product of one or multiple techniques:

· for relief printing such as woodcut and linocut the ink goes on the original surface of the matrix;

· for intaglio printmaking such as etching, the ink goes beneath the original surface of the matrix;

· in lithography and monoprinting, the matrix retains its entire surface, but some parts are treated to make the image;

· for collagraphy, textured found material is adhered to the printing plate. This texture is captured on the paper after the print is created.

For etching, woodcut, or linocut processes, colour is applied by using either separate plates or blocks or by using a reductionist approach. In a multiple plate process, each is inked up in a different color and applied in a particular sequence to produce the entire picture. Every application of another plate of color will interact with the color already applied to the paper, and this must be kept in mind when producing the separation of colors.

A thoughtful and technically challenging art process, printmaking produces wonderful moments of serendipitous beauty and exquisite formal approaches to the artist’s vision.

Official Website: http://www.sherwaygardens.ca