Please note that all exhibitions are suspended due to the closure of the Hunnewell Building and Visitor Center as part of Harvard University’s COVID-19 response. See our current art exhibition online.
When our Visitor Center reopens, on site-exhibitions will resume and continue to be free and open to the public in the Hunnewell Building at 125 Arborway, Boston.
For five printmakers, sketching trips to the Arnold Arboretum solidified what they already had in common—the many ways that nature and plant life informs their art. Although their media covers a wide range of print techniques, and each artist has a unique approach to their art, all are attracted to the natural world, often trees. From white line woodcut to monotype, a keen sensibility of botanical life emerges that is portrayed through the eye and craft of these artists.
Printmakers Arlene Bandes, Lynda Goldberg, Mary Beth Maisel, Amy McGregor-Radin, and Gayle Smalley have been meeting monthly for more than ten years to discuss works in progress. They critique, support, and challenge each other to explore beyond the limits of their art. Ideas, sketches, and current prints are shared. There is a commonality that emerges in the art exhibited in this show of homing into the essence of nature.
Each artist is an active member of the Nature Printing Society, an international association of artists whose philosophy is based on respect for nature as demonstrated through the art of the print. Members have exhibited in numerous galleries and museums including Attleboro Art Museum, The Art Complex Museum (Duxbury), The Boston Athenaeum, and the Fuller Museum of Art (now Fuller Craft Museum), among others. Maisel and Goldberg contributed chapters to The Art of Printing from Nature, published by the Nature Printing Society. Goldberg and Bandes are instructors in the Greater Boston area. For more information on this exhibition or individual works, please contact arbweb@arnarb.harvard.edu. See a post on ARBlog to learn how this show was affected by, and was adapted to COVID-19.
Chinese Chestnut by Gayle Smalley 10 ¾” x 7 ¼” Monotype copyright 2020 Gayle Smalley
