Metro Pulse/Artbeat/Teaberry Press

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What:
Prints from Teaberry Press

Where:
UT's Ewing Gallery, the Art & Architecture Building, 1715 Volunteer Blvd. (call 974-3200 for hours)

When:
Thru Sept. 15

Loving prints from Teaberry Press before they leave town

by Heather Joyner

Despite the sound of it, Teaberry Press is not the name of a late 19th century bookbinding establishment in Britain. And Timothy Berry —the T. Berry of San Francisco's Teaberry Press—was never Uma Thurman's godfather nor a best-selling pediatrician author. Even though artist and printmaking guru Berry has worked throughout the past 25 years with some very famous individuals on numerous editions of intaglio prints, if you're unfamiliar with the respected Teaberry Press, you are not alone. Now is your chance to get educated: tonight at 7:30 p.m., Berry will present slides of his art in Room 109 of UT's Art & Architecture Building. A walk-through and discussion with students will take place Sept. 12 at noon, and at 3 p.m. Sept. 14, Berry will lead a Ewing Gallery talk before the all-too-soon closing reception for his show titled The Intimate Collaboration.

Interestingly enough, the Teaberry Press show was launched at the Ewing years ago, and it has since been seen in 31 institutions in 18 states. One dozen prints from the last decade have been added to update approximately 50 offerings as they come full circle to collectively end where they began. Having taught in both California and Colorado, Teaberry founder and director Berry understands the creative process; he has been lauded by fellow exhibited artists including Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, and Christo. Beside the fact that it does not publish prints, Berry's press is considered unusual in the contemporary printmaking world because of its commitment to one medium and its emphasis on collaboration. Although that collaborative spirit has existed for a long time in the history of art, it is sometimes lacking these days.

Beginning around the 15th century, artists sought master printing technicians for assistance in reproducing their work. Intaglio, from the Italian word meaning a "cut," is an incised technique (i.e. incision) using a metal plate with an image carved or drawn into a surface from which the ink is wiped. Ink remaining in the crevices is then transferred to paper when rolled through a press. Like other processes, we're left guessing precisely how it evolved, perhaps imagining a gent's discovery that "niello" carvings on the handle of a bloody sword had imprinted themselves onto his glove. Engraving is a form of intaglio that made images by the likes of Dürer and Breughel more affordable and thus more popular. However, given their reproducibility, prints made from plates have often been viewed as "lesser art." But we now know better.

Berry's own work is, in my mind, as captivating as that of better-known artists. For instance, his 1991 softground aquatint etching titled "Culture Mine" is a tonal knockout, combining lines resembling guitar strings with fecund-looking flora. Resulting from rosin particles, saturated shades of gold, green, and orange actually glow, giving the print a jewel-like presence. Artist Squeak Carnwath (who teaches with Berry at Colorado's Anderson Ranch Arts Center) achieves a similar, albeit more somber effect with his "Reason To Believe" piece in the same medium. Featuring articles of clothing that could be found strewn across a playground—some of which vaguely resemble human organs—the print contains phrases like "We all want to believe in safety."

On the lighter side are funky hardground etchings by Jim Nutt. Teeming with odd, anatomically intriguing characters, they're reminiscent of lascivious Peruvian folk art. On the other hand, Christo's illustration of a swaddled Venus in Bologna lends the wrapped statue all the allure of Sophia Loren in a burka. Of course Oldenburg's piece is, as might be expected, amusing. His "Spoon Pier" image from 1975 takes yet another common household item out of context and into the realm of surreality.

Female artists appear a tad underrepresented, but presumably not by design. As traditional as Beth Van Hoesen's etchings of a brown bear and a rooster are, their beautiful rendering and astonishing detail are memorable. Phyllis Bronson's "Champion" monoprint, created with Berry, strays from the straight print approach with its cut paper assemblage and seems to suffer in comparison with less complex efforts. Titled "Colorado Series (#s 1, 2, and 3)," pieces by Richard Thompson project what could be defined as a feminine sensibility. Essentially still-life work � la Matisse, Thompson's triptych is every bit as much about the artist's hand and chosen materials as it is about meaningful content. Whether we're looking at a pitcher with a fish diving into it, a bowl of fruit with furry-looking shapes resembling nesting gerbils, or sketchy scorpions, we can feel the gestures and energy that went into the making of them.

William T. Wiley's recent additions to The Intimate Collaboration signal a new overall direction in printmaking—namely, the creation of pieces incorporating a lot of words. In particular, "De-touring Crews A Fiction" presents a block of red text beneath an image of an anvil. Even there, wordplay is at work: "Acom Anvil" refers to Acoma, New Mexico's sacred Native American mesa (a.k.a. "Big Sky"). A pair of suitcases suggest that spirituality is a kind of cultural baggage, and Thompson's text implies that people are nonetheless simple animals. At the end, the passage reads, "The animal writes, spits, breeds, and bites into why or what we know not." Nor do we know where printmaking will lead us in coming decades. But if Berry's Teaberry Press is any indication, we are on a productive and interactive track.