Montgomery, ALA – The Alabama State Council on the Arts is showcasing the work of PaperWorkers Local, a 501(c)(3) non-profit artists'co-operative from Birmingham, Alabama. This group of artists actively works to promote the understanding and appreciation of art as well as create opportunities for artists in and near Birmingham. Since 2013, this co-operative has run work space for workshops as well as hosted public art exhibitions and artist's talks.

This current exhibition by the PaperWorkers Local is on display at the Georgine Clarke Alabama Artists Gallery in downtown Montgomery through March 20. The gallery is located in the RSA Tower, 201 Monroe Street, first floor, suite 110.

A closing reception is scheduled for Thursday, February 6, from 3:00 – 6:00 p.m. with artist talks. The reception is free and open to the public.

Members of PaperWorkers Local and Artists featured in the exhibition:

• Mimi Boston

• Liza Butts

• Nancy Carney-Barnhart

• Chris Davenport

• John DeMotte

• Zachary Edison

• Bill Goudy

• Roger Jones

• Enid Keyser

• Eve Laxer

• Jane Marshall

• Sarah Marshall

• Robin McDonald

• Helga Mendoza

• Linda Merry

• Michael Merry

• Haruyo Miyagawa

• Debra Riffe

• Richard Stockham

• David Tankersley

• Joi West

• Whitney Wilkerson

• Cathy Wright

MIMI BOSTON makes woodblocks and photo intaglio prints and uses combinations of printmaking processes. Some of her prints are abstract, most are representational, and many are botanically inspired. Mimi majored in art history and enjoyed a financial career before taking extensive printmaking classes at Penland, at Arrowmont, at the Torpedo Factory, at the Inkubator Press, and at Zea Mays. She grew up in Virginia and is pleased to be settled in her chosen hometown of Birmingham. She is a founding member of PaperWorkers Local.

LIZA BUTTS is a multimedia artist from Birmingham, Alabama. She studied visual arts at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and received her BFA in Studio Art at Washington University in St. Louis. Following school, Liza lived in New York City where she worked at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. There, her love of printmaking was ignited and she began making monoprints with textiles. Liza has exhibited prints at the Harnett Biennial of American Prints in Richmond, Virginia, and at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey.

NANCY CARNEY-BARNHART has a wide range of styles in visual arts that range from traditional to digital throughout her work and over time. As an archaeologist, her scientific illustration experience can be seen in some of her work. Her printmaking repertoire includes monotypes and photographic applications in intaglio, lithography, and cyanotype.

CHRIS DAVENPORT of Pocket Knife Press tells stories of ecology, place, and people through printmaking, handmade paper, and the artist book. He is an artist and educator with an MFA in the book arts from the University of Alabama. He teaches at the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama in Birmingham and is the school librarian at Tarrant Intermediate School.

JOHN DEMOTTE received his BFA in 1987 from the University of Montevallo in photography and printmaking. Beginning his career in Washington, DC, he worked on projects for the Phillips Collection, Capitol Hill Arts Center, and the Washington–Moscow Arts and Cultural Exchange. Since returning to Birmingham in 1991, he has been with Atchison Gallery/Village Framers, where he is now vice president and master framer. As a founding member of the artist co-operative PaperWorkers Local, John has led workshops on Solar Plate photo-intaglio and cyano­type photo processes. John works mainly in photography and printmaking, specializing in photo intaglio and engraving with monoprint.

ZACHARY A. EDISON specializes in mixed media drawing, intaglio printmaking, found sculpture, and paint­ing depicting strained subjects attempting to maintain their individuality. Jagged lines, muddy values, and rough textures combine the visible and internal anxieties a person may face in a hostile environment or how it is perceived by the subject. Zachary obtained his Bachelor of Art Studio and Bachelor of English from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2016 and 2017 respectively and is currently a preparator at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

WILLIAM GOUDY has had a long and varied career. He attended the Memphis School of Art, graduating in 1974 with a degree in adverstising and design. For 25 years he worked at WVTM-TV, Channel 13, in Birmingham, becoming art director. His next career was as a sports agent, negotiating contracts for NFL and NBA players. He currently works in the Goudy family construction business.

ROGER JONES is a Birmingham-based artist whose drawings and paintings have addressed architecture, nature, religion, and music. His most recent work utilizes pattern and repetition to create a visual response to music. Jones has a BA from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and an MFA in painting from the University of Alabama. His work has been published in American Artist and Studio Visit. Jones has worked at the Montgomery Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, and the University of Alabama. Please visit http://rogerjones.yolasite.com

ENID KEYSER has always had one foot firmly planted in the sciences, but the toes of the other foot have dabbled in art, of some sort, since childhood. She has experimented with linoleum block printmaking, watercolor, graphite drawing, photography. She has also attended classes in glass bead making and jewelry. She has submit­ted etchings, monoprints, dry point, reduction woodblock, moku hanga, and photography to PWL’s annual Fall Salon, PWL members shows, the juried Ink Only and Ink Only II; and exhibitions in Gadsden, Talladega, Decatur, and Delaware. She currently serves as president of PaperWorkers Local.

EVE LAXER, New York City native grew up near the Smokey Mountains where art and the natural world first found a place in her heart. She received a BFA in ceramics and has enjoyed working with a variety of media including paint, photography, sculpture, and printmaking. In 2006 Eve co-founded Creative Wellness, a counseling and arts organization that continues to serve the Birmingham, Alabama community. Environmental and anti-violence activism also occupy an important place in Eve’s life and work.

JANE MARSHALL has taught classes, workshops, lectured, exhibited, and served as artist-in-residence at several universities including Kansas State, Wisconsin, Cornell, Western Michigan, Albright College, Indiana State, and more recently at UAB. She was the first artist selected for a residency at Studio in the Woods in New Orleans. She collaborated on “Big Prints,” a project organized by Scott Stephens at the University of Montevallo that resulted in the production of three large-scale prints that were exhibited at several museums in Alabama. Her collaboration with Sue Gosin of Dieu Donne, NYC, on “Medea,” a large-scale artist book, was exhibited at and is in the collection of the New York Public Library.

SARAH MARSHALL grew up near Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of a reference librarian and a composer. She received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992 and, in 1999, her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa. Influenced by interests such as language, reading and book objects, architecture, and biological science, Sarah focuses on the processes of printmaking and drawing. Her works on paper show organic forms that become portraits and characters; repeated in various environments, these characters examine our ideas about decision-making and the ways we treat each other. Sarah is currently employed as an associate professor of art at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

ROBIN McDONALD is an independent graphic designer and photographer in Leeds, Alabama. After studying art history and receiving an MA from Columbia University in 1973, he returned to Birmingham, and instead began a career as a graphic designer. He started his own business in 1984. In 1991, Robin became the designer and principal photographer for Alabama Heritage, a quarterly magazine on Alabama history. He recently designed his 112th issue of the magazine. Robin is the author of two books of photography, Heart of a Small Town: Photographs of Alabama Towns (2003), and Visions of the Black Belt: A Cultural Survey of the Heart of Alabama (2015), both published by the University of Alabama Press.

HELGA MENDOZA, a native of Bogota, Colombia, studied textiles at Los Andes University and, in 1999, moved to the United States to complete an MFA at Florida State University, focused on video installations, printmaking, and mixed media; she was awarded the FSU Fellowship for 2003. In Tallahassee she worked as an art instructor for kids at an art foundation. Since then, Helga has developed and taught summer camps and after school art classes at Highlands School, Birmingham Zoo, Birmingham Museum of Art, and at her studio near the Cahaba River. She is the artistic director for the Dia de los Muertos Festival in Birmingham. She spends her time teaching art to kids, planing altars for the dead, and running her art studio.

MICHAEL MERRY creates works that are ongoing, meaning that he continually works on them, adding to or subtracting from works that were started ten years ago. Some works might come to dead ends and get completely covered over with a new beginning. Yet the old layers are still there, however invisible, still part of the new thing. In fact, the new could not have existed without the old any more than the present we live in could have existed without the past. Michael is a founding member of PaperWorkers Local, and has taught art at the University of Alabama, UAB, and Birmingham Southern University. He is currently art instructor at Coastal Alabama Community College in Monroeville.

LINDA MERRY, along with husband Michael, is a founding member of PaperWorkers Local. She graduated from UAB with a BFA in fine art, and has since pursued her special interest in book arts and her abiding love of birds, which are frequent subjects of her work. She created an etching of chimney swifts in downtown Birmingham to be sold as a fundraiser for “Chimney Swift Love,” PWL’s recent Valentine’s Day collaboration with the Birmingham Audubon Society. She has exhibited in numerous PWL groups shows.

WHITNEY LYNN MINSON was born in 1993 in southern Missouri and was raised south of Nashville in Spring Hill, Tennessee. She received her BFA in studio art: printmaking, as well as a minor in anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Currently she lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and is the secretary of PaperWorkers Local. Recently, Whitney had a thirteen-foot collaged woodblock print installation piece, “Time,” displayed at IS Projects’ Pushing the Pull exhibition in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

HARUYO MIYAGAWA was born in Japan and immigrated the United States with her family at the age of seven. She grew up mostly in the Deep South. After graduating from the University of Alabama, she lived in Japan for nine years. She returned to the US and settled in Birmingham, Alabama, where she worked as a librarian at the Birmingham Public Library. She joined PaperWorkers Local after retirement. In her art, she often explores the themes of identity and memory. The two works in the current exhibit make use of family photographs and items from her childhood.

DEBRA EUBANKS RIFFE is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi. She earned her BFA from Howard University, College of Fine Arts, Washington, DC, and has been a professional graphic designer and illustrator for more than thirty years. Her technical skills and methods have evolved through trial and error. Although she is not opposed to using color, she enjoys printing with a rich, black, oil-based ink and the technical challenge of balancing intricate details and negative space whether carving wood or linoleum.

RICHARD STOCKHAM is a Birmingham printmaker and lawyer. His prints in this show might be viewed as arguments by other means for juries in other courts. The printmaking techniques he uses here are moku hanga (Japanese woodblock printing) and paper lithography.

DAVID TANKERSLEY is a self-taught artist who discovered the botanical monoprint process at a Paperworkers Local workshop in 2018. His love of gardening and botanicals is evident in his work. David is currently the vice-president of PaperWorkers Local.

JOI WEST is a multidisciplinary artist and collector of stories currently located in Birmingham, Alabama. As a Black Queer Woman, she explores the relationship between families, the LGBTQ+ community, and the meaning behind Identity as it affects us on a personal level, through documentary film photography, printmaking, and mixed media.

CATHY WRIGHT has been a photographer for 40 years, and began printmaking more than a decade ago. A founding member of Paperworkers Local printmakers coop, she has learned through workshops, great mentors, and experimentation. Her photographs and prints have appeared in a number of shows. She is interested in the intersection between the immediacy and technical requirements of photography and the tactile satisfaction of working with print materials, which can be just about anything. The result is usually experimental and often mixed media. She has been experimenting with methods to incorporate her photographs into printmaking, from solar plates to chemical transfers to treated papers.

The exhibit is on display in the Georgine Clarke Alabama Artists Gallery through March 20, 2020. The gallery is operated by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and is free and open to the public Monday-Friday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. The gallery is located on the first floor of the RSA Tower, located in downtown Montgomery at 201 Monroe Street.

 

For Additional information, please contact: Amy Jenkins, Visual Arts Program Manager and Manager of the Georgine Clarke Alabama Artists Gallery. (334) 242-5150 or by email at: amy.jenkins@arts.alabama.gov