Assisted by the coordination efforts of Peterborough native turned New York City artist Joseph Hart, the Sharon Arts Center Exhibition Gallery will display the innovative works of 30 printmakers from far and wide.

The exhibition, called “Recent Editions,” brings together clients from two New York based printmaking publishers Hart works with, Forth Estate and Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.

The exhibitors have shown their work before, but never in Peterborough, Hart says.
Hart began his career as an artist taking classes at the Sharon Arts Center Education Center. Since then he has continued to be involved with Sharon Arts, the curator of one group show several years ago and now a coordinator of the current show.

“I stick my head in every now and then,” Hart says.

Primarily a visual artist who works with drawings and paintings, printmaking was a step in a different direction for Hart. For one thing, with printmaking, there are multiple editions of a piece of work rather than having it be a unique painting, drawing or sculpture.

Hart was invited by Forth Estate to try his hand at printmaking and was able to work with a master printer. Hart says this planted the seed to make printmaking another of his ways to share art.

“Printmaking requires a lot of patience and more importantly this idea of collaboration,” Hart says. “I was working with a few assistants and a master printer to realize the idea I had in my head.”

This contrasts nicely with other, more isolated forms of making art, Hart says. It also opened him up to making many drafts of a piece, many versions before the final product, which is what printmaking requires.

Hart needed the most help with the technical aspects of printmaking, particularly the alchemy involved. Printmaking utilizes chemicals and acids, hazardous materials Hart had never worked with before.

“Learning what to do with them is the stuff that takes years of experience,” Hart says. “I had someone help me because I didn’t have years to learn everything.”

One work Hart will display at the exhibition took him a year to complete. Hart has an etching and a screen print in the show.

What ties the pieces together for all the artists are the printmaking techniques, which are varied, including lithography, etching, woodblock and others. The final product varies from artist to artist, Hart says, and most of the work that will be displayed shows technical achievements the artists found worth sharing with a broader audience.

“Technical achievement and detail, those are the things I pay attention to,” Hart says of prints.

Printmaking allows the artists to get very detailed in their work, which creates a sense of preciousness, intimacy and nuance. Of course, like other art forms, something must bring the viewer into the print, Hart says, whether it is beauty or curiosity or repulsion.

“I wouldn’t say I’m repulsed by anything in the show, though,” he adds.

Participating artists include Glen Baldridge, Ian Cooper, Bjorn Copeland, Elizabeth Deasy, Alex Dodge, Elise Ferguson, Joseph Hart, Butt Johnson, Andrew Kuo, Eddie Martinez, Milton Rosa-Ortiz, Phil Sanders, Suzanne Song, Ruby Sky Stiler, Ryan Wallace, Will Yackulic, Kevin Zucker, Todd Anderson, Chakaia Booker, Enrique Chagoya, Mike Houston, Cannonball Press, Steve Johnson, Michael Krueger, Jose Antonio Suarez Londono, Beauvais Lyons, Martin Mazorra, Robert Mueller, Chunwoo Nam, Jenny Schmid, Tom Spleth and Chris Uphues.

This story appears on Page 13 of the March 4 Ledger-Transcript.