1614 Latimer Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
(between Spruce and Locust streets)
Tel: 215-735-6090
E-mail: info@printcenter.org
Web: http://printcenter.org
Gallery hours Tuesday through Saturday 11:00-5:30

JANET FISH

The Print Center is honored to present work by internationally known painter and printmaker Janet Fish. The fourteen works on view at The Print Center constitute a significant body of Fish’s innovative lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, and screenprints created between 1975-1996. The prints are wild in color and complex in composition. In her prints, Fish wonderfully captures the light-carrying, transparent and reflective surfaces of glassware—a trademark of her work. Her still-lifes—arrangements of glasses, ceramic bowls, flowers, and fruits—reflect the light from the windows of her New York loft and her home in Vermont.

Painter and printmaker, Janet Fish, dares to use all the forbidden subjects in art—bouquets, sunsets, pets, and still-lifes—and began doing so at a time when Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism were still the dominating aesthetic. Fish's realism is informed by the trends of the moment. During the 70s, repetitive and serial motifs in her work played off of the Minimalist modular. Today, Fish continues to carefully group flowers with fruit and common household items to evoke an emotional reaction. Fish's prints give her audience the experience of sensing the ordinary in a new way.

Recent solo exhibitions include John Szoke Graphics, Inc., Galleries Grace Borgenicht, DC Moore in New York, Marianne Friedlan Gallery in Florida, and Joy Tash Gallery in Arizona. Awards include a fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center, an American Academy of Art and Letters, a Harris Award, and three MacDowell Fellowships. Her work is in the collections of the Whitney and Metropolitan Museums, the Art institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She lives and works in Vermont and New York.

WILLIAM WYLIE : THE RIVERS EDGE

The Cache la Poudre Project documents the last of the undammed river on the Front Range of Colorado which is currently threatened by the rapid growth of neighboring towns. Photographer William Wylie walked 150 miles along the eastern plains of Colorado from the mouth of the river to its headwaters at the Continental Divide, discovering along the way many places often missed by the casual visitor. Like nineteenth-century expeditionary photographers and painters such as Timothy O'Sullivan and William Henry Jackson Wylie photographs within a tradition of lucid examination that favors faithful recording as a way to understand his subject.

The selection of silver gelatin prints on view at The Print Center, convey the beauty and sense of possibility inherent in the Cache la Poudre River. Wylie’s close-ups and vistas document the rapid changes of the river. As preservation of the environment becomes more crucial with each advancement in technological and industrial expansion, Wylie's atmospheric photographs underscore the battle between nature and culture, the tension between the admiration of the natural world and the control of its resources.

William Wylie teaches photography at the University of Virginia. His photographs have been widely exhibited and are in numerous public collections. In 1998 Wylie received an Artist Fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts and has recently published a book on the Poudre series: Riverwalk: Explorations Along the Cache La Poudre River which will be available in The Print Center Gallery Store.

SALLY TOSTI : SIGHTS OF NATURE

Sally Tosti's prints are rooted in the natural world. Her large linoleum cuts depict swamplands and dense forests in which the fallen trees, overgrown underbrush, and muddy streams are the result of natural occurrences. In her prints, Tosti captures these rhythms of natural cycles with minimum details and sensuous flowing lines.

Tosti seeks to explore the common landscape. The source of her images are the often overlooked sites of nature: a stream along a dirt road, a clump of grass, a tangle of roots or an outcropping of rocks. She is also intrigued by the forces of nature such as the aftermath of a tornado, land erosion or fallen trees. To Tosti, these natural elements are metaphors for life. As Tosti explains, "The rhythms of nature and the seasons mirror the ebb and flow of life and renewal of the life cycle."

Sally Tosti received her M.F.A. from Marywood College, Scranton, PA and currently teaches printmaking at Keystone College. Her prints have been widely exhibited and can be found in several public collections. She has been the recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and a F. Lammot Belin Arts Scholarship. Her involvement at The Print Center has been extensive including participation in the creation of 25x25, inclusion in Annual International Competitions and in The Print Center Gallery Store's inventory.