Discover Port Townsend.com is pleased to present our Featured Artist for May 2024, Deborah Maris Lader. Deborah wears many hats and is an accomplished, multi-talented artist, musician, performer, and administrator. Printmaking is her passion and preferred art medium as we will discover in the following paragraphs. Please enjoy a sampling of Deborah’s artwork and leave your comments below!
Deborah’s hand made prints are currently showing in her solo exhibition “ALIGHT” at Aurora Loop Gallery, opening Sat, May 4 with a meet & greet 5-8pm. Curated by Mary O’Shaughnessy, the show runs through May 26 and is open Thur – Sun 12-5 and by appointment. The exhibition features evocative and imaginative work that falls into two groups: medium and large-scale beautiful multi-colored etchings and lithographs, and small poignant prints featuring a variety of birds, perched, and in flight.
Artist's Bio and Statement
Deborah Maris Lader is the Founder/Director of the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, a much revered and world renown workshop that has mentored, taught, and nurtured artists since its founding in 1989. Deborah is also a member of the touring Alt Folk band, Sons of the Never Wrong, whose regularly sold-out concerts attract a rabidly loyal following. Deborah exhibits her prints, drawings, photography, and mixed media artwork internationally, and her work appears in many permanent collections, including the Chicago History Museum, the New York Public Library, and the City of Palo Alto. Deborah was awarded Outstanding Printmaker 2016 by the Mid America Print Council for her work and her contribution to the printmaking community. Other awards for her service to the artistic community include “The 2007 Arts Advocate Award” (ArtWalk Ravenswood), “The 1999 Paul Berger Arts Entrepreneurship Award” (Columbia College, Chicago), and “Cultural Contributor of the Year” (Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce, 2003). She is a former Board member of the Mid America Print Council, the Chicago Artists Coalition and the American Print Alliance. Her artwork has been featured in numerous books, publications, and on album covers and other cultural ephemera. Recent solo exhibitions include Addington Gallery (Chicago), Bert Green Fine Art (Chicago), Galerie La Hune-Brenner in Paris, France, Firecat Projects (Chicago), Anderson Arts Center (Kenosha, WI), Jennifer Norback Gallery (Chicago) and others. She’s been in thousands of group shows. Deborah is a regular guest on art podcasts and radio features, and a frequent contributor at conferences, panel presentations, and visiting artist residencies. Deborah also plays guitar, mandolin, piano and banjo and writes songs and sings with her band, which will release their 11th studio album in the coming year. Both music and building community have always been important aspects of Deborah’s art practice, and feed into her prodigious visual output.
If you visit my studio, you’ll notice that the work is varied, but clearly that of a person in love with printmaking. As I draw on plate and stone, burn images onto screens, carve into wood, or drypoint into glass, I let the process of making guide me where it wants to lead, and I’m often surprised by the resulting messages and visual information. Why did that fish just hop onto my stone? Why does the bird soar via parachute? Why do I keep drawing elaborate rootlike motifs that become hair or rope or seaweed? The imagery in my etchings, lithographs, screen prints and recent explorations with found glass are derived from both dreams and life, and the way these experiences are sewn together, with odd bits of memories mixed and strewn throughout. I’m compelled by the drawn line, and where it might lead me. After so many years of creating somethings out of nothings, I completely trust what might be revealed, and revel in that process.
Birds and fish migrate on waves of cloud and sea, using their senses to navigate their way. We watch in wonder as they flit and float, and are inspired to be our better selves. I’m interested in the idea of fragility – of our faculties, of our senses, of life, and of our “place” in the world and how, in the pursuit of saving it, we might save ourselves.
Deborah Maris Lader Gallery (click on each image to enlarge)
-
- Odyss-see
-
- Evan's Heron
-
- The Air and Water Show
-
- Can't See the Poet for the Poet Trees
-
- Wings and a Prayer
-
- The Undertakers Songbook
Go to Teravana for details and how to register for the course.