Final Fridays can be busy. Wichita’s monthly night of gallery openings can be so jam-packed with events that it’s hard to know where to go. In an effort to help you organize your evening, I plan to offer a monthly list of must-see shows. Here are my recommendations for May.

Dustin Parker at Watermark

Dustin says he no longer cares what his audience thinks about his work and is creating abstract paintings simply because he wants to. Well, good for him, because “The Beautiful Confusion” is sure to be a great show. Dustin’s abstract paintings contain all the color, texture and excitement that he is known for – without the recognizable imagery.

Watermark Books
4701 E. Douglas
6-8 p.m.
Click here for additional details.

Brian Hinkle at Artworks

Every few years, Brian’s work takes a dramatic stylistic turn. After a year of teaching high school in western Kansas, Brian is back in town with an exhibition of Kansas landscapes. What? Barns and silos? You may be skeptical, but with Brian’s abundant brush skills – backed up by his respect for and knowledge of art history – these are likely to be the best barn paintings you’ll see on this Friday or any other.

Artworks
7724 E. Central Ave., No. 300
5:30-8:30 p.m.

XX/4 at Fisch Haus

The fourth annual XX Women’s Invitational Exhibition continues its tradition of showcasing works by five women who were invited by the artists from last year’s show. I’m looking forward to seeing new work by former Wichitan Maggy Rozycki Hiltner, who now lives in Montana.

Fisch Haus
524 S. Commerce
7-10 p.m.

Brad Ruder and Marc Bosworth at Tangent Lab

Oh, did I mention I’m having a show? (I promise not to do this every month.) My good friend Brad’s digital collages are outstanding. Brad knows his way around a darkroom, so his complex and beautiful compositions are informed by much more than his ability to click a mouse. I’m showing hand-made prints, collages and paintings on canvas. We’ll give an informal gallery talk at 10 p.m.

Tangent Lab
143 N. Rock Island, Third Floor
7-11 p.m.
Be sure to check out details about the show here.

My interest in printmaking goes back a long way. At age 18, I was fortunate to land a job as an artist at a screen-printing shop that produced mostly T-shirts. In those days, the color separations were created by carefully hand-cutting and peeling layers of delicate plastic called rubylith. In addition to creating all the art, my duties included stretching, coating and burning screens, making film positives in the darkroom using a large copy camera, and occasionally pulling a squeegee or stacking and folding freshly printed shirts as they came off the end of the dryer. In college, I studied fine art with an emphasis on drawing, eventually earning a master’s degree in printmaking from Wichita State University.

These days, I teach a night class in printmaking at Friends University in Wichita. My students, many of them graphic design majors, are typically about the same age that I was when I started my first screen-printing job. In one action-packed semester, they learn how to make monoprints, linoleum-block prints, collagraphs, screen-prints, drypoints and etchings. We also tour the facility at WSU so the students can see the big lithographic limestones, and see what a well-equipped printmaking studio looks (and smells) like.

Old School is New School

The class I teach is very hands-on. Students have to do things such as bevel copper plates with files. They run the risk of slicing fingers with sharp linoleum carving tools. They get their hands dirty. What’s more, though the inks and materials have improved much over the years, the techniques are ancient. They have no place in a world of all-in-one printer-scanner-copiers. They are obsolete. Or are they?

There is no better way for a young graphic designer to experience things such as registration, trapping, overprinting. No better way to understand the importance of putting the right kind of ink on the appropriate substrate. And for someone who may someday be doing press checks, there is no better way to learn to appreciate the craft and skill that it takes to be a good pressman.

And even if digital printing technologies someday completely replace those pressmen, there is more to it. I don’t often hear students whine and I’ve never been asked, “What’s the point?” Instead, they seem to relish a chance to practice hand skills on something other than texting. They quickly become attuned to the details, the subtleties of marks and textures that are unique to printmaking. Though they are in some ways very sophisticated and savvy, these children of the digital age find reassurance in the fact that their world is still grounded in things much more tactile than the click of a mouse. One student summed it up best by saying, “This is great! It’s like Photoshop, except that it’s real!”

The Ink Sticks

At the end of this semester, I was working late at home, grading final projects. When I finished grading, I took a stack of prints back over to school to leave for the students to pick up. At 11:30 on a Tuesday night I was surprised to find two of my students hard at work in the studio making some new prints – this after all their work for the class had already been turned in and graded.

The other day, I ran into a former student who is doing well as a designer with a local studio. He told me excitedly how he had just bought a platen press – the kind traditionally used for letterpress printing – for his own enjoyment. It seems that printmaking is making a lasting impression on some of these young minds.