Students in Beginning Printmaking with Bruce Thompson, worked directly with the visiting artist, Emily L. R. Adams, to create a series of mono-prints to be displayed in the gallery at SPSCC. The work provides freedom of exploration and expression for each student to engage in a new technical process that is complex but also approachable from beginner through advanced. The technique is a French printmaking term called 'Chine Colle’  and translates to Chinese collage. In this traditional process, cut tissue paper is collaged onto the print paper as it runs through the press. All prints have similar imagery that the artist will use to build upon her professional practice. The underlying concept centers on boundaries, breaking boundaries, and the importance of working together to redefine boundaries. 

Emily Adams Profile Pic

Emily L. R. Adams

Collaborating Artist

Adams is a multi-media printmaking artist living in Olympia, WA. Her work combines conventional printmaking techniques with non-traditional installation and presentation. Examining complex issues of femininity, gender norms, and transformative justice brings a heightened awareness through the power of the multiple.

Adams earned her BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design (2005) and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin (2015). She is a recipient of the David and Edith Sinaiko Woman in the Arts Award, and her work featured in New American Painting Magazine. Adams has a breadth of printmaking experience; having worked with artists and master printers at the highly respected Pace Editions and Tandem Press.

This exhibition, titled Collaboration/Installation, is the result of a collaboration with Bruce Thompson’s 2023 spring printmaking class and visiting artist, Emily R. L. Adams. Students produced the 26 prints on view in the gallery. 

It was an honor and joy to work with SPSCC to see this exhibition come together. Special gratitude goes out to Bruce Thompson, Sean Barnes, John Brooks, Lori Doron, Riann Nagy, and Lauren Ernsberger. 

In loving memory of my mother, Suzanne Elizabeth Osse Adams.

Flowers hold a rich historical context loaded with various meanings. Flowers are a sign of spring, a celebratory offering from one person to another, a symbol of love, and a symbol of renewal. I was inspired to reference flowers from my mother’s garden in this collaborative art project after my mother’s passing last month. I am working with the image of flora to convey the beauty of growth and vibrancy of a new beginning. Flowers in this art exhibition symbolize a metaphor for the cycle of life, growth, love, nurturing, death, and the process of transformation. The colorful vignette shapes of tissue paper with black ink screen prints overtop are consistent in format but unique in each design, not unlike a bed of flowers.

Honoring my mother. I am my mother’s daughter. I am an artist, a teacher, a feminist. My mom was intelligent, patient, loving, kind, nurturing, comforting, strong, quiet, a human who knew how to take care of herself, and an advocate for civil rights and progress for women. As I grow from the process of grieving, making art that connects me with my mom supports my healing. 

The flora specimens on display are pressed flowers from my mother’s garden and the home where I grew up. Years ago, I had asked my mom to press some flowers for me with the initial notion of scanning them to create a digital textile pattern design; it wasn’t until the opportunity to work with students here at SPSCC that I decided to explore using them in another way.

For this work, the pressed flowers were carefully photocopied and enlarged up to 400%. Students then traced the outlines of the flowers onto tissue paper. A printmaking technique called chine colle' was used to adhere the tissue to the white paper. The black flower 'drawings' were created by screen printing on top of the tissue arrangements.

(1) Tiger Lily, (2) Fuchsia, Hosta, (3) Rose of Sharon

Installation

Art Work