Museum And Gallery

Jon Laustsen’s miniatures; and AS220’s ‘Print Lottery’

By GREG COOK | September 11, 2012

SCHMALTZ AND SASS Detail from a poster by Kennedy Jr.

Over the past couple decades, a great deal of art energy in Providence has been generated by local printmaking — from the RISD printshops to Shepard Fairey to Fort Thunder to the Dirt Palace. These days, the central power plant is AS220's Community Printshop. This month they're raising money for continued operations via the annual "Print Lottery." For a $100 ticket, you get a randomly-selected work drawn on September 29 from the preview exhibit of "200 artists from around the world" at AS220's Main Gallery (115 Empire Street, Providence). The lottery includes political broadsides, delicate beauty, and world-famous street artist Swoon, who contributes a mediocre screenprint of an old guy. But the most of the wildcat electricity comes from lesser-known folks.

Chris Fritton's concert poster for Deerhoof at first looks like a dazzling computer-designed pattern of Wingdings characters, but — wow — it's actually a hand-done arrangement of letterpress decorative borders. Lara Henderson's monotype and lithograph is a dance of jellyfish in lush reds and gold. Alex Lukas's lithograph, printed by Amanda D'Amico, depicts a city overgrown by post-apocalypse vines and moss. Recent AS220 visiting artist Dennis McNett contributes silkscreens of snarling wolves.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., who will give a workshop here on September 27 and speak on September 28, is one of the underground heroes of the letterpress revival. His prints are a mix of old carnival posters, wise poetry, homespun schmaltz, and sass: "Life/You're not gonna get rich/So you might as well get happy"; "Love/Queer/Love"; "Accept/And/Be"; "We've upped our/standards so/Up/Yours."

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ARTICLES BY GREG COOK

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN | May 13, 2013
What does it mean to be a man? That's the question at the heart of this smart, sumptuous exhibit — one of the best shows in the region this year.

MERRY PRANKSTERS | May 07, 2013
Parked out front of Brown University's gray modernist Granoff Center on a recent sunny morning were one of those 15-foot-tall inflatable rats that unions install in front of businesses they're protesting and a limousine sloppily painted to resemble a yellow and black school bus.

ALTERED IMAGES | April 30, 2013
Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.

IN THE CITY | April 23, 2013
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Providence art scene is how the city itself has been such a rich subject. A decade ago, the city became a galvanizing topic as artists fought to protect the old mills that served as their homes and studios from demolition — with mixed success. But lately, the community's industrial architecture itself has attracted artists' attention.

THE AFTERMATH OF ATROCITY | April 16, 2013
From the ruins of the Iraq war emerges Wafaa Bilal's "The Ashes Series" and Daniel Heyman's "I Am Sorry It Is So Difficult To Start," on view at Brown University's Bell Gallery.