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October Issue
2008
Artists Guild of Spartanburg in Spartanburg,
SC, Features Works by Jim Creal
The Artists Guild of Spartanburg in Spartanburg, SC, will present the exhibit, Working Proofs: New Work Development through Etching Print Processes, featuring works by Jim Creal, on view at the Guild Gallery at the Chapman Cultural Center from Oct. 1 - 29, 2008.
Creal, a Spartanburg native and gallery director for thea Milliken Gallery at Converse College, has received numerous awards and grants for professional development in the printmaking processes. In 2000 this renowned printmaker was selected to represent Spartanburg in a cultural exchange with Wintertur, Switzerland.
The exhibited etching proofs, both representational and nonrepresentational, vary in size from 4" x 4" to 16" x 20". These are prints, and a few monotypes that have a direct reference to an etched image, that give a visual report on the stage or state of development of an image in a print plate.
"In etching it often takes more than one process for an image to build up to its final form," the artist explains. "There are numerous print processes that may be combined in a seemingly endless number of permutations. Prints in this exhibit will have utilized the etching processes of hard and soft grounds, lift and white grounds and aquatints."
Creal's background is diverse. He earned three undergraduate degrees: in philosophy from Washington and Lee University, in geology from The University of Montana and in fine art from the University of Montana.
"I have worked on a production line in a textile factory, as a mate on a dive boat in the Florida Keys, as a structural welder on a construction site for a fossil fuel plant in Sutherland, NE, as a minerals exploration geologist in Ireland, Scotland and Alaska, as the gallery director for the Milliken Gallery at Converse College and I own my own business, Creal's Studio and Gallery," the artist says of the extensive experience that is reflected in his work.
Creal has been teaching monotype printmaking residencies with the South Carolina Arts Commission's Arts in Education program since 1995 and has taught more than 100 monotype residencies in schools across the state, working with students from rising third graders through high school. In the spring of this year, Creal conducted an extended residency in the introduction to the etching processes at Pickens High School.
In 2006, Creal was awarded an Artist Assistance Grant from the Arts Partnership of Greater Spartanburg for the development of new works through etching processes. The images in this exhibit for the most part come from the continued exploration of the etching processes that began with that grant.
An etched print is an impression made from a plate, usually metal, whose image has been made by the action of acids eating the metal away in desired image areas creating depressions. In printing, these depressions become ink retaining reservoirs. Ink is applied to the plate and the top surface of the plate is wiped free of ink. Dampened paper is placed over the inked plate and run under an etching press. The paper fibers forced into the depressions pick up the ink to form the finished print. The etched print has a relief surface.
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Gallery listings or call Laura Pinkley at 864/764-9568.
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2008 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2008 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.