Beginning June 3, The Fine Family Art Gallery of the MJCCA will host an exhibition entitled, “Andi Arnovitz: One Printmaker's World.”

Andi Arnovitz explains, "A printmaker is a strange
breed.  We often, literally work backwards,
and there are many stages to creating a print. 
What one sees on the surface of the plate sometimes in no way resembles
what the final print will be.  Unlike
drawing or painting, in which a work is never more than what you see at a given
moment, a print is never revealed until the plate is inked, and put through the
printing press.  There is always a sense
of anticipation as the press is turned, and then, revelation, as the blanket is
lifted and the paper is peeled away from the plate."

 
Arnovitz continues, "I love this process.  I enjoy all forms of printing: silkscreen,
intaglio, and monotype.  In this last
year I have also expanded my printmaking techniques to include non-toxic
solarplate etching, as well as digitally produced gyclee prints.  Each of these processes pushes the limits of
printmaking, each of them requires certain specific skills, but all of them
require a plate at some stage of the process."

 
Ms. Arnovitz's real
love is intaglio.  She works primarily in
softground and aquatint.  Many critics
think her etchings look a lot like mezzotints, because she builds up the blacks
until they are deep, rich, and velvety. 
Unlike mezzotints, where the image is revealed through a reductive
process, her etchings are created by multiple layers of aquatint.  (Aquatint is a powdered resin which is baked
onto the plate with a blow torch.)  Ms.
Arnovitz often aquatints a plate fifteen or twenty times.  The viewer usually has no idea that some of
her etchings required months of work.

 
Much of Ms. Arnovitz's
black and white prints are interiors, devoid of people.  There is often an open door, a chair, a
window left open.  One is never sure
whether the people inhabiting these rooms have just left, or have yet to
come.  After moving to Jerusalem, she became obsessed with what she
couldn't see.  In Jerusalem one is always looking at walls, at
gates, at shuttered windows.  There are
layers of stories behind each one.  There
is a depressing darkness, a heaviness of the stones, oppressive, and
mysterious.  This is what she is after:
what you can't see, what lurks in the shadows and who was here before.  All the international competitions she has
participated in have been with these etchings.

 
Ms. Arnovitz says, "After months of working on etchings with
only black ink, I am desperate for color. 
That's when I turn to monotype. 
Monotypes for me are pure artistic release and abandon.  I often have no plan, I just begin painting
and rolling out lithographic oil inks on the plate, and then see what happens.
I have also created a system of transferring Xeroxes to the plate, and I use
this method, along with drawing on the print after it is printed with oil
pastels and pencils.  I even use
chincolle, a process of collaging on the print as it goes through the press."

 
Ms. Arnovitz's
monotypes are generally colorful and reflect a more exuberant depiction of her
surroundings.  Certain elements repeat
themselves over and over: the cypress trees that are everywhere in Jerusalem, the leaves of
eucalyptus trees, lemons and pomegranates that bloom there, the silhouette of
old stone houses, Armenian tiles.  These
are all graphic elements she is surrounded by in Jerusalem. 
Last year, Ms. Arnovitz began to make gyclee prints from her
monotypes.  She explains, "I found a
fabulous art printer in Jerusalem,
literally a bike ride away from my house, and he has allowed me to duplicate
what would otherwise be a single print."

 
The gyclee print, Vest
for the Giver of Charity, is a print of a piece that was created for the
Bremen Jewish Museum's show, The Art of Giving. 
The vest is reflective of another part of Ms. Arnovitz's work, monotypes
which she tears apart and sews on, creating pouches, vests and other garments
from the prints.

 
Finally, the
silkscreens are works that were created at the Jerusalem Print Workshop. Ms.
Arnovitz was invited by the workshop to create several prints, which she
produced with their Master silkscreen printer. 
Silkscreen is completely different in that paint is pushed through a
screen onto the paper, each one color at a time.  Ms. Arnovitz's silkscreens have more than
fifteen colors in them.  Visually, they
are also reflective of her sketchbooks in which she records scenes in Jerusalem.  The opacity of color is something that
generally can only be achieved in silkscreens.

 
Ms. Arnovitz says,
"The work in this exhibition is incredibly varied, and spans several years but
there is a common thread throughout.  No
matter which process, there is a point where I am standing over the printing
press, turning the wheel, holding my breath, waiting to see what will happen
when I lift the paper, waiting to see the print..."

 
Originally from Kansas City, Missouri,
Andi Arnovitz began painting, as well as studying printmaking in 1993 at Atlanta's Chastain
Arts Center.
She studied for two years at Circle B. Press (a printmaking studio) in Atlanta. In 1999, Ms.
Arnovitz presented her first one-woman-show at Temple
Sinai in Atlanta. In late 1999, she moved to Jerusalem, Israel
to present, creating etchings and monotypes at the Jerusalem Print Workshop.

 
Ms. Arnovitz's work
has been featured in international exhibitions, in various countries around the
world, including France, Lithuania, Canada,
Spain, Finland, Poland,
Bulgaria, the United States and England. She has had several solo
shows in Israel,
and has participated in several group shows there as well. She has also had her
work featured in several magazines and was just commissioned to create work for
the nationally recognized project Artists in Cellophane.

 
"Andi Arnovitz: One
Printmaker's World" will run through August 30, 2007.  The Fine Family
Art Gallery
is located at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA), 5342 Tilly Mill Road,
Dunwoody. Gallery hours: Tues., Wed. & Thurs. 1-9 pm; Sun. 1-6 pm. Admission
is Free.

 
For more information, call Lora Sommer, MJCCA's Arts &
Entertainment Publicity Coordinator at 770.395.2603,
lora.sommer@atlantajcc.org; or Kim Goodfriend, MJCCA's Arts & Entertainment
Director at 770.395.2614, kim.goodfriend@atlantajcc.org.