I recently rediscovered a photo I had taken at the opening of a new exhibition of contemporary prints at the Knoxville Museum of Art back at the end of January. I returned to the museum this week to refresh my memory and perhaps to explore whether my thoughts had changed or evolved. The exhibit is closing the end of this week, so I do recommend seeing it I you have a chance, although the works are part of the permanent collection and will resurface again.
What I discovered is that thoughts and impressions do indeed change, but certain things do not. The print I loved in January remains my favorite print of the lot, even though there are many fabulous prints, including examples by artists whose names are more well-known. I am too old to think that this means anything significant. My attraction to this print is not really about the quality of the print, although I do think it is masterfully done., All the prints are fascinating, and I am not qualified as a critic. The fact that I am drawn to this particular work is as much about me and what I bring to the conversation as it is about the artist and the print itself.
This is the print I loved, the print I still love, and I have actually been back to look at it on multiple occasions. The print, titled Building, is by James Surls. I love the depth of it, which is imperfectly captured in this photograph. Notice how the artist utilized both sides of the paper, so one sees depth to the print itself. Imagine the complexity of that process: these are not random bits on paper, the dual printing adds layers of complexity, but also enhances that sense of randomness I see in the print. But it is very hard to make something appear random, easier for nature than for orderly human brains. What I particularly like is the way it speaks to me of memory, of things past and things present, old and new and how our past shapes and organizes our perceptions of the present and the future. This print speaks to me of home, of self, of holding on and also of letting go, and how we never quite manage either. Our pasts, our expectations, our experiences, shape us and are always there floating in our own personal ether, sometimes up front, sometimes further back, a part and parcel of who we are. And yet there is a certain sense of disruption here, of uprootedness. One is grounded but just because who we are, our past, is always with us, does not mean we do not sometimes flounder, does not mean we have control over how we are shaped.
Oddly, this print also reminded me of another print, one I had seen at an exhibit at the McNay Museum in San Antonio back in August. The prints are nothing alike. The artists' work is nothing alike, and yet, even in this last visit to the Knoxville Museum, that connection came to mind, a connection not so much between the art itself as between the feelings the works evoke in this particular observer.
This print, titled Headed to the Promised Land, is by Juan Mora. Where the first print was light and airy, this print is dark and heavy. And yet, they both speak to experience and memory and the things we hold onto in the face of disruption. Mora's prints, at least the ones at the exhibit in question address the experience of the immigrant, and this experience of holding onto culture and the past, while simultaneously being very uncertain about the future. In both prints there is, at least to me, a sense of how the past and expectations shape our present, a tacit acknowledgement that who we are is shaped by all the bits and pieces of our lives. Mora explores how we hold on to our pasts, explores fear, and the unsettledness of facing the unknown, acknowledging that we cannot imagine or seek the future, or even salvation, as separate from our fears and hopes, from the compounding of our experiences. And yet the bundle of the things that we deem necessary for life, for security, also burdens us, and holds us down. We must carry it with us, but we must also lighten our load, allow our stuff to fall by the wayside. If you look closely, you still find hope in this print, you still see that, although the things that we hold on to are both a part of who we are, it is not our baggage that will get us where we are going.
Two prints. Two cities. Six months between my encounter with each. An older artist and a younger one. The Surls work is 20 years old, made when the artist was middle-aged. Mora is young. Both works speak to the experience of transition. I recognize that the connection is extremely tentative, and yet I remain compelled by something I am not sure I understand, I am not sure I need to understand.