Color in Relief: Woodblock Prints from Origins to Abstraction

Join us on Thursday, November 17 at 6 pm in the Murray Room, Lauinger Library, 5th Floor, for a special panel discussion detailing the exhibition Color in Relief: Woodblock Prints from Origins to Abstraction .

The panel is in conjunction with the Washington Print Club and the Washington Printmakers Gallery and includes:

  • Dr. Joann Moser, Senior Curator Emerita, Smithsonian American Art Museum
  • Ms. Ingrid Rose, Conservator of Works on Paper
  • Ms. Terry Parmelee, Artist and Printmaker
  • Ms. Karen Seibert, Representative of the Estate of Werner Drewes
  • Mr. James Gross, Artist and Educator 

Reception to follow panel discussion. 

Mr. James Gross earned a bachelor’s degree and masters in teaching from Friends University, Wichita before earning his master’s degree in Fine Arts from Wichita State University. Gross had the opportunity to learn from Master teachers Theodoros Stamos, Louise Nevelson and Will Barnet. He served as a studio assistant to Robert Goodnough in New York from 1981 to1983, and became affiliated with the Althea Viafora Gallery and Tibor de Nagy Galleries during that time and through the 1990s.  Prints by Mr. Gross are in the British museum, the Smithsonian, the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.  He teaches at a small college in Andover, Kansas.

Dr. Joann Moser is senior curator Emeritus of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where she worked since 1986. Her research interests include 20th-century American prints and drawings, and American monotypes. In 2011, Moser organized Multiplicity, an exhibition of contemporary prints from the museum’s permanent collection, and What’s It All Mean: William T. Wiley in Retrospect in 2009. Among Moser’s many exhibition credits are Graphic Masters I-III: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2008- 2010), The Prints of Sean Scully (2007), Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America (1997), Prints by California Artists (1992) and Visual Poetry: The Drawings of Joseph Stella (1990). In addition to authoring exhibition catalogs, Moser has published on Jean Metzinger, the printmaking workshop Atelier 17, and collaborative printmaking in the United States before 1960. She recently wrote the lead essay for the catalogue raisonné of Sean Scully’s prints. Moser is an advisor to the Washington Print Club, and serves on the advisory boards of The Tamarind Papers, Pyramid Atlantic and Hand Print Workshop International. She has also served as a juror for numerous national and regional exhibitions. Before coming to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Moser was the senior curator of collections (1976–1986) and acting director (1980, 1981–1983) of the University of Iowa Museum of Art in Iowa City. Moser earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Smith College in 1969. She holds both a master’s degree and doctorate in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Ms. Terry Parmelee studied with outstanding artists Un’Ichi Hiratsuka in Japan (who was later declared a National Living Treasure) and American Carol Summers in Paris and New York.  While living overseas she took courses at the Summer Academy for Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria and the Academia di Belle Arti in Perugia, Italy.  Returning to the US, Parmelee earned a Master’s Degree in Painting at American University in Washington, DC, in 1967 augmented by silkscreen study at Pratt Graphic Center in New York in 1969.  The Master’s Degree led to teaching art and history in the Washington area. She joined the Fendrick Gallery in Georgetown in 1969. The gallery sold many of her prints to private and corporate collections. Highlights of Parmelee’s career were the commissioning of editions of her prints by the International Graphic Society and by Associated American Artists in New York. The late curator of prints at Georgetown University, Joseph Haller, S.J. wrote the introduction to Parmelee’s catalogue raisonnée. Thanks to his efforts and a generous donation from Ingrid Rose, the Booth Family Center for Special Collections holds over 50 of Parmelee’s prints.

Ms. Ingrid Rose spent twelve years with the delegation of the European Union in Washington, DC, during which time she and her husband, Milton, fell in love with and began collecting prints by forgotten American printmakers. The Roses became members of the Washington Print Club and were later posted to the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland. During this time, Mrs. Rose covered art exhibitions for the embassy's News of Warsaw, and organized a print exhibition entitled American Landscape Between the Wars, at the Palace of Culture and National Museum in Warsaw. She also interned in the Paper Conservation department of the National Museum, and subsequently published catalogue raisonnés of Werner Drewes’s print oeuvre in 1984 and Prentiss Taylor’s lithographs, in collaboration with Roderick Quiroz, in 1996.  

Ms. Karen Drewes Seibert, granddaughter of Werner Drewes, grew up in the DC area, not far from where her grandparents chose to retire in Reston, VA. Seibert learned about her grandfather’s life, mostly through long quilting sessions with her step-grandmother and jeweler Maria Drewes (Mary Louis Lischer). After graduating with degrees in Zoology and Environmental Science, Seibert pursued a career in Water Quality of the Chesapeake Bay and Environmental Impact Assessment work for the Maryland Department of the Environment, and for the engineering company, Dames & Moore.  As she raised her family, Ms. Seibert worked in Environmental Outdoor Education and High Adventure-Leadership programming. She has also pursued her own art in beading and fused glass. Seibert has been an effective promoter of her grandfather’s work and legacy.  First, through organizing a family database for his oils, and later through the DrewesFineArt.com website, which she developed with her daughter, Kim Herrera also an artist and sculptor. Seibert has had organized multiple solo shows for Werner Drewes and worked with museums in Berlin, Chicago, Asheville, St. Louis, Annapolis, and here in Bethesda and Washington, DC.  She is currently available for consultations and lectures to museums, galleries and private collectors to help with authentication, pricing, fact checking and obtaining works about Werner Drewes, the WPA, Atelier 17, Bauhaus and his connection with his contemporaries.

 

 

 

6:00 PM
Murray Room, Lauinger Library, 5th Floor
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