This Thursday, March 17, Metropolitan Capital Bank will host an opening reception for their new Art Works Chicago exhibition, The Art of Printmaking: Tandem Press. 

The public is invited to RSVP to Scott Cohen at 312.640.2378 or scohen@metcapbank.com for the reception at the North Annex of the Historic Tree Studios, 9 East Ontario.  The reception will run from 5:30pm to 7:00pm on Thursday, March 17; wine, Irish beer and hors d'oeuvres will be served. 

Art Works Chicago – A Progressive Corporate Exhibition of Chicago Artists, was launched by Metropolitan Capital Bank in association with Nixon Art Associates, Inc.  It showcases exhibitions by prominent Chicago artists and galleries in the workplace.  Be sure to check Metropolitan Captial Bank’s online calendar of events page for new, upcoming events.

Tandem Press is an artistic laboratory where internationally recognized artists, who have made their reputations independently, undertake creative experimentation. Tandem Press is one of only three professional presses affiliated to a university in the United States.  At Tandem, internationally renowned artists create editions of prints and interact with graduate and undergraduate students.  Learn more about Tandem Press on their website: http://www.tandempress.wisc.edu/index.html

Tony Fitzpatrick is a man who's seemingly everywhere, and this weekend while in New York for the Verge Art Fair, he's getting some nice press from the New York Times style magazine, T (also a familiar name for the artist.)

The magazine gets a few choice quotes from Fitzpatrick, and includes an unmistakeable image of one of his signature collages, featuring one of his favorite subjects, a standing fish.  The artist's well-praised play, This Train, showed in Chicago in 2010, first at The 16th Street Theater in Berwyn, and then at Steppenwolf Theater in Lincoln Park. This Train's next stop is a little further from home, in Brooklyn.  Now, New York is taking notice.

The article may be found here, but be sure to grab the magazine this weekend. My only question is how did this end up in the style magazine rather than say, the arts section... Though perhaps that's still to come this summer.  Let's hope.

Two different print-heavy exhibitions open today at The Block Museum: The Satirical Edge in Contemporary Prints and Graphics, and Thomas Rowlandson: Pleasures and Pursuits in Georgian England.  Both exhibitions opened today, January 14, and run through March 13, 2011.

The Rowlandson exhibition, showing in the Museum’s main gallery, features 71 drawings, watercolors, prints and books that show a slice of social and political life of Georgian England – a period of time that produced literary figures Jane Austen and Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Rowlandson (1757-1827) was one of the most popular satirists of his time and lives on through his impressive detailed technique and sense of humor found in these works on paper.

The works in the Rowlandson exhibition are drawn from the collections of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale Center for British Art, Lewis Walpole Library, and Vassar College Libraries, Archives and Special Collections.

Thomas Rowlandson, The Devonshire, or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes, 1784, etching, with stipple, in black ink with watercolor on cream wove paper.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittesley Fund, 1959, 59.599.57.

Thomas Rowlandson, Comedy in the Country, Tragedy in London, 1807, etching in black ink with watercolor on cream wove paper.  Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, 807.05.29.01.1.

Thomas Rowlandson, Vauxhall Gardens, 1784, watercolor with pen in black and gray ink over graphite on cream wove paper.  Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1975.4.1844

The Satirical Edge in Contemporary Prints and Graphics is comprised primarily from the Block’s collection and features works from the 1950s to present day by artists working in America who have created powerful works of art that address issues such as warfare, greed, gluttony and injustice.  Included in this exhibition is one of the Guerrilla Girls well-known prints that focuses on feminist issues, among many other varied works by different artists. 

Guerilla Girls, Do women have to be naked to get into the Metropolitan Museum, 1989, reprinted 1999, color offset lithograph.  Block Museum, 2001.  Copyright by the Guerilla Girls.  Courtesy www.guerillagirls.com

William Gropper, Lust, ca. 1955-57, lithograph.  Block Museum, Gift of Evelyn Salk in memory of her husband, Erwin A. Salk, 2011.21.33

Warrington Colescott, History of Printmaking Update: Leroy Neiman Pulls a Screen Print, 1982, color etching, aquatint, and sugar-lift aquatint.  Block Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Bolz, 1985.75.6. Courtesy of the artist

...More Prints!

Coming up later this month at The Block is the Printpalooza Print Fair on Saturday, January 29 from noon – 4pm.  Mark your calendars and stop by for live printmaking demos, on-the-spot t-shirt printing, affordable original prints starting around $20, one-of-a-kind graphic publications and more. Also featuring Drive By Press, Cannonball Press, Spudnik Press, Comix Revolution, and music by Abstract Science DJs. 

For more info, visit blockmuseum.northwestern.edu

The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art

Northwestern University, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, IL 60208