SCGI Awards Exhibition at Worth Ryder Gallery

Donald and Era Farnsworth with their collaborative 2004 tapestry Dharmakaya in Tokyo in 2008.
Dharmakaya is included in the Awards Exhibition at Worth Ryder Gallery, opening this Wednesday, March 19th.
The Southern Graphics Council International conference is right around the corner! The SCGI is hosting its 42nd annual conference, Bridges: Spanning Tradition, Innovation, and Activism, in the San Francisco Bay Area this year; it will be the first West Coast conference in the organization’s history.

The SGCI will present a variety of awards to distinguished print artists and UC Berkeley Continuing Lecturer Randy Hussong has organized an exhibition at the university's Worth Ryder Art Gallery for the recipients of these awards, including the Innovation award winner, Magnolia director Donald Farnsworth.

The Grand Opening Reception for this exhibition is this Wednesday, March 19th from 4 to 7 pm.

Rather than exhibiting only his own work, Farnsworth has chosen to highlight a variety of projects published by Magnolia Editions in the last thirty years. The show will include works representing a host of proprietary and unorthodox processes by a veritable who's-who of Bay Area artists including Joan Brown, Enrique Chagoya, Hung Liu, Ray Saunders, Squeak Carnwath, Bruce Conner, and Rupert Garcia, plus a collaborative print by William Wiley, Robert Hudson, and Richard Shaw; recent tapestries by Chuck Close and Kiki Smith round out the exhibition.

Kiki Smith - Cathedral, 2013
Jacquard tapestry - 113 x 75 in. Edition of 10
The gallery will also host a special Memorial Retrospective Exhibition for UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice Professor Emeritus George Miyasaki (1935 – 2013).

Additionally, work will be exhibited by award winners Juan Fuentes and Sylvia Solochek Walters, and by Professor Emeritus Richard Shaw, whose award is in the appropriately titled Breaking The Mold category. There will also be installations by Ehren Tool -- a ceramicist who Magnolia blog readers may recall from the Combat Paper Project -- as well as the UC Berkeley Advanced Printmaking Class.

If you can't make the Grand Opening Reception on Wednesday, March 19th, there will be a special Conference Tour event on Friday, March 28th from 10 to 5 pm.

For more information on the show and associated events, please visit the Exhibition's home page.

In memory of George Miyasaki

George Miyasaki at Magnolia in 2009
It is hard to believe and difficult to report, but our friend and teacher George Miyasaki passed away this week. He was 78 years old.

George was a role model to all who knew him – an extraordinarily humble and soft-spoken man whose grace, patience, and good humor were matched only by his incredible work ethic. Having studied painting and printmaking with Richard Diebenkorn, Leon Goldin, and Nathan Oliveira in the 1950s, George immediately began winning awards for a highly innovative body of printmaking work that continued right up until this year. His signature mix of collograph textures, expressionistic forms, and unpredictable colors made his work instantly recognizable. It would be a disservice to George to say that his work simply reflected his personality when he was so unquestionably gifted and worked so admirably at his craft – yet it is true that his prints balanced a gentle, lyrical elegance with a bold physicality in a way which mirrored the quiet strength that seemed to radiate from George himself.

A young George Miyasaki, second from right, with (from left) Harold Rosenberg, John Coplans, and Wilfrid Zogbaum
One can read all about George's storied career in the biography available from his galleries or the numerous major museums that collected his work; to list his various Guggenheim and NEA grants, to speak of his work at Atelier 17 in Paris or his decades of teaching at UC Berkeley, while extremely impressive, somehow still does not seem to do him justice. George was a lion. It is hard to put into words how generous he was with his brilliance, how dedicated he was to his work, and how fortunate we are to have learned so much from him. We love you, George.

John Mass, Era Farnsworth, George Miyasaki, and Brian Caraway at Magnolia in 2010

George Miyasaki - Composition 18, a lithograph from 1957

Miyasaki (far left) with family in the 1950s

Guy Diehl, Donald Farnsworth, George Miyasaki, Enrique Chagoya, and Dean Smith at Magnolia, 2010

Miyasaki (at right, ever the instructor) at a wedding in Hawaii, 2006

Miyasaki with family in front of a painting in progress, 2005

A 2005 drawing by Miyasaki commemorating his parents

Squeak Carnwath and George Miyasaki with collagraphs in progress at Magnolia, 2010

Miyasaki at Magnolia, 2008

Printer Rick Dula and George Miyasaki wiping a collograph plate at Magnolia, 1999

Dula and Miyasaki pull a print at Magnolia, 1999

George Miyasaki - Dog Days of Summer III (v.4), 2005
collagraph and mixed media, 31.5 x 25 in.

Miyasaki at Magnolia, 2008

Artists at Magnolia

Magnolia director Donald Farnsworth with Stanford Art Department faculty Enrique Chagoya, Gail Wight, Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, and Craig Weiss
Wednesday was another busy day at Magnolia in which a number of accomplished artists – who also teach at UC Berkeley and Stanford - visited the studio for printing and consulting.

Earlier in the day, artists and UC Berkeley alumni/faculty Aaron Maietta and Brody R. stopped by to do some amazing trompe-l'oeil prints:

Aaron Maietta and Brody R.



Trompe-l'oeil prints by Aaron Maietta and Brody R.
Those pieces of wood that appear to be sitting on the press are actually printed on a flat sheet of drywall!

Then later in the afternoon, Donald Farnsworth hosted a group from the Art & Art History Department at Stanford that included Enrique Chagoya, Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, Gail Wight, and Craig Weiss.

As the Stanford Art Department finally moves into its new building, these faculty members looked to Farnsworth and Magnolia Editions for advice on setting up a state-of-the-art printmaking facility.

The group also took a break from their discussion to enjoy a print on aluminum panel created at Magnolia by Enrique Chagoya:

Farnsworth, Weiss, Chagoya, Martinez-Ruiz, and Wight

More art by Enrique Chagoya at Magnolia Editions

More art by Donald Farnsworth at Magnolia Editions

UC Berkeley Art Department website

Stanford University Art Department website