At PhoPa Gallery, its “Pa” side is currently being explored with monoprints by Karen Adrienne, Kris Sader and Barbra Whitten. Their works on paper share layering and repetition of process, as well as a degree of liquidity, which explains the show’s title, Ripple Effect.
There’s a calm, almost soothing palette to the entire gallery, and all artists evidence a great sense of color. In its exclusive focus on monoprints (unique works on paper that are made using ink and a printing surface), the show intrinsically foregrounds process. However, Adrienne, Sader and Whitten go further to make process integral to their works’ essence — and that’s also where the work diverges.
Adrienne counts water as a major inspiration for her work. Her complex monoprints suggest the element in the palette of colors and painterly application of ink. By repeatedly folding the paper and running it through the press, sharply delineated areas remain unprinted, and result in strong horizontals, verticals and diagonals. This interplay of continuation and disruption through repeated passes results in overlapping, and ever-new combinations of colors. It also makes the prints’ overarching concept architectonic as the folding causes some planes to advance, others to recede — adding a shallow third dimension to the paper, not unlike the waves of water. It becomes complicated when this physical, spatial aspect of the images reinforces, ignores, or even contradicts spatial illusion caused by the color scheme.
Sader’s fascinating images are inspired by the beaches, dunes and marshes of Cape Cod. Using the same built-up plate with varying inks and displaying the resulting collagraphs at varying orientations, the very same image is taken through an amazing array of subtle differences that actually have strong visual effects. Being closest to landscape, they read either as aerial views of a tidal area or as cellular growth as seen through a microscope. Either abstract line work is foregrounded, or grass and dunes of sand. The prints’ surface is layered with inks, becoming tactile, almost appropriately topographical.
In Whitten’s monoprints, it is individual letters, complete or in fragments, that spill over the sheets of paper, like a torrent of language. Through use of various type fonts, sizes and colors, they are printed in layers: overlapping and touching each other in larger dynamic forms. Letters trickle down from the menacingly dark upper half of “FYI,” while being sucked into the white, gaping hole at the center of “?” in convincing suggestions of movement. While individual letters may be recognized, colorful play is paramount.
Both Adrienne and Sader are expertly pushing their medium to the point of mystery. Although we can intellectually understand their processes, specifics and sequential order remain enigmatic, and often awe-inspiring. The resulting images possess multi-layered surfaces that are luscious and viscerally evocative. While intriguing for their color harmonies and suggestive compositions, Whitten’s stamped accumulations in comparison lack such visual intrigue. They are flat, without visible material accretions that might ask the eye to linger, are more graphic and truly two-dimensional. Language being the subject and medium, one might also be justified to expect a conceptual angle to the work. It is entirely up to the viewer to supply such angle. To me, the work suggests a flow of thoughts and also becomes a visualization of the daily deluge of information that we are exposed to.
United by the process of monoprinting, Adrienne, Sader and Whitten use that medium to greatly differing effects — from the suggestion of land formations and the abstraction of the element of water, to the most culturally codified abstraction there is, language. Yet all three supply us with ample occasions to wonder, think and enjoy.
Britta Konau can be reached at bkonau@gmail.com.
“Ripple Effect: Monoprints by Karen Adrienne, Kris Sader, and Barbra Whitten” | through May 30 | at the PhoPa Gallery, 132 Washington Ave., Portland | 207. 517.0200 | phopagallery.com