The public is invited to an opening reception for Art at the JCC’s newest exhibition featuring Santa Barbara Printmakers, 2-4 p.m. Sunday, March 5, at the Jewish Federation’s Bronfman Family Jewish Community Center, 524 Chapala St.
Master printmaker James L. Webb will give a slide program from 3:15-4 p.m. Awards will be presented at 3 p.m. The reception will include live gypsy music, as well as appetizers and wine. The exhibition will be on display until May 17.
Hired straight out of the printmaking program at Cal State Long Beach, Webb was a master printmaker at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles from 1966-77. His first client was Josef Albers, the influential modern artist and color theorist best known for Homages to the Square.
Webb subsequently worked on prints with artists Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Ed Ruscha and Frank Stella.
These prints were recently featured in The Serial Impulse at Gemini G.E.L. exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
At the JCC’s opening reception, Webb will present examples of his work and share anecdotes from his time with these famous artists.
Santa Barbara Printmakers is a nonprofit organization dedicated to printmaking as an art form.
Printmakers are artists who use hand and press printing techniques such as etching, dry point, monotype, mono print, woodblock, collagraph, linocut, clay, lithography, silk screen, transfer, and digital programs to create one of-a-kind prints as well as editions of identical images.
Santa Barbara Printmakers evolved from the Monotype Guild, founded in 1989, which focused on a single printmaking technique, monotypes — one-of-a-kind, hand-pulled prints. It is now a multi-generational membership organization of 75-plus active printmakers from the Central Coast.
It includes recent college graduates, established and returning artists, all dedicated to artistic exploration and expression using a variety of printing techniques from traditional to contemporary. The spring exhibition will be its sixth collaboration with Art at the JCC.
For more information, visit www.sbprintmakers.com or www.jewishsantabarbara.org/art-at-the-jcc.
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— Briana Sapp Tivey for Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara.