Gaylord Schanilec - "Engravings"

Jan 20, 2012 to Feb 25, 2012
12:00 pm until 5:00 pm

Groveland Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of prints by guest artist, Gaylord Schanilec. As an artist, writer, letterpress printer, designer and illustrator, Schanilec has set the standard for contemporary artist’s books over the last 30 years. Schanilec’s studio and home, tucked into a valley above the Mississippi River near Stockholm, Wisconsin, has been the production facility for dozens of highly collected and unique fine press books. His multi-color wood engraving techniques are masterful in their meticulous rendering as well as their exquisite aesthetic sensibilities. His interests and experiences, as well as his hometown landscape and community, often become subjects for his books. The text for his 1989 book, Farmers, was composed of interviews with local farming families and included illustrations of the surrounding rural landscape and its structures. Sylvae, a study of trees in the artist’s 20-acre woods, features prints of the end grain and long grain of 24 species of trees, each accompanied by historical anecdotes and natural science notes. Schanilec has also investigated subjects far from home, including two books about New York City. In the first, New York Revisited, commissioned by the Grolier Club in 2002 and written by Kenneth Auchincloss, Schanilec illuminates familiar New York icons with a fresh eye. His most recent book, Bicycle Diaries, written by Richard Goodman, is an account of Goodman’s three months of daily bicycle visits to the World Trade Center disaster site.

This is the first time Schanilec is exhibiting his prints independently from his books. Schanilec explains:

“These engravings were made for books that I’ve printed in the past 25 years. They were made to be seen within reading distance, about a foot from the reader's face. They were sewn into bindings and destined to darkness on a bookshelf, along with their texts, until the book is opened and a reader, in due course, finds them. Now, here they are, framed on the vast white plains of these walls – like icebergs in an ocean – but emitting, I hope, the warmth of the world from which they came.”

Schanilec received his BA in visual arts from the University of North Dakota in 1977. Soon after he moved to the Twin Cites and began his career as a book artist. In the following years he has received numerous awards, commissions and grants for his contributions to the literary arts including the Jerome Book Arts Fellowship, the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts in Residence, The Carl Hertzog Award and The American Institute of Graphic Arts Award of Excellence. His work is included in the collections of IBM, 3M, the Getty Museum, the Walker Art Center, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the special collections libraries of numerous colleges and universities.

The artist will be present at the opening reception on Friday, January 20 from 5-8 p.m. He will also give an artist talk on Saturday, February 4 at 2 p.m. This exhibition runs concurrently with New Year, New Artists, an exhibition of paintings and drawings by new gallery artists in the main gallery. Both exhibitions continue through February 25. For more information please call 612-377-7800 or visit www.grovelandgallery.com.

Groveland Gallery
25 Groveland Terrace
Minneapolis, MN
View map »