Laconia Gallery

Laconia Gallery and the Boston Printmakers present Guanajuato, an exhibition of woodblock prints and monoprints whose explosive color and exuberant life leap off the walls of the gallery. Along with a spectacular body of work by internationally known artists Carol Summers, Karen Kunc and Hugo Anaya, the show features books and individual prints by participants who joined them in an artists’ residency, Forum on Creativity, offered by The Boston Printmakers and organized by Renee Covalucci. This dynamic, collaborative residency took place in Guanajuato, Mexico in the highlands of the Sierra Madre Oriental in August of 2010.

Retablos, found in area churches and local art collections are the powerful central theme of all the work created during the workshop. Also called “laminas” in Mexico, retablos are small oil paintings on tin, zinc, wood or copper that venerate Catholic saints and events or miracles. This folk art – colorful, spiritual, symbolic, and allegorical is echoed in the work of Summers, Anaya and Kunc and in the retablos created during the residency: personal, celebratory visual records of our reactions to the music, art, history, people, and vibrancy of Guanajuato.

Carol Summers is widely known as one of America’s foremost printmakers. He is renowned for his vivid colors and his revolutionary woodblock techniques. Summers’ work is in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and countless other museums worldwide. Hugo Anaya was born and raised in Guanajuato, GTO, Mexico. He studied in the US at the Portland Art Museum School and Portland State University. His work has been exhibited in Oregon art galleries, and in and at the Gene Byron Museum in Guanajuato. Hugo’s work is in public collections including the Gilkey Print Center in the Portland Art Museum, and in countless private collections. Karen Kunc is the Willa Cather Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. The Museum of Modern Art, NY and The Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo, own her prints and artist books, as do countless other museums worldwide, while exhibitions of her work occur regularly around the globe.

– Candy Nartonis and Ky Ober, Curators