The current exhibition at Heartland Community College’s Joe McCauley Gallery offers modern takes on the Japanese Ukiyo-e movement and other ways Japanese arts and culture have influenced U.S.-based artists.
Through May 11, "The Floating World" highlights four artists of various cultural backgrounds who are influenced by Japan, including two who work in central Illinois.
Veteran Peoria printmaker Cathie Crawford and multimedia artist Jenny Knavel each contributed works to “The Floating World,” though neither woman is Japanese. Japanese-American artist Nishiki Sugawara-Beda, of Dallas, and Japanese printmaker Erika Shiba are also part of the show. Shiba grew up in Hong Kong and is based in New York.
As a relief printmaker, Crawford uses plywood to make her large-scale prints.
“Prints have a unique texture and surface quality that I just find more interesting than painting,” she said. Crawford was trained as a painter at Ohio State University. There, she took her first printmaking class and never looked back.
“That’s all I wanted to do was printmaking,” she said. “I like the fact that I can sell my art and keep it too and exhibit it in more than one place at the same time. Prints are more affordable, which makes them more accessible to people than other art medias.”
After graduate studies at Bradley University, Crawford established a studio in Peoria. Her 35-year career includes many landscapes, often inspired by her travels. But there is also a nod to 19th century Ukiyo-e printmakers in Crawford’s work.
“There was a new, growing middle class who could afford art,” she said, “and prints were more affordable than paintings. The Ukiyo-e printmakers really did achieve celebrity status. I don’t know if this is true, but apparently the earliest Japanese prints came to the West as packing material for Japanese knick-knacks. The impressionists fell in love with them.”
Crawford contributed prints representing water and koi fish to "The Floating World," created with a different Japanese printmaking technique called Mokulito, or lithography on wood.
“I like working with images of the landscape and I’ve always been attracted to water,” she said. “Water is our most important resource. For me, it’s a place of replenishment and invigoration—where I get rejuvenated."
Western Illinois University professor Jenny Knavel is a textile artist inspired by kimono patterns in the quilts she’s selected for this show. Each quilt depicts horses Knavel met at a horse therapy farm near her home in Delavan, Wisconsin.
“I’m a tall, blonde woman; I’m not Japanese,” she said. “I love pattern and decoration.”
Knavel refers here to the so-called “P&D” movement popular in the 1970s and ‘80s. The period was a full-tilt response to minimalism that embraces color and decorative embellishments.
“I just love anything that’s patterned, and color,” Knavel said. “That’s been very important to my artmaking in general.”
Ukiyo-e roughly translates as “the floating world,” and represents a kind of transcendence steeped in the natural world. It is also thought to be associated with witticism, extravagance—even hedonism. The interplay between function and form in Knavel’s work and its commitment to decorative elements, she said, is a subtle nod to hallmarks from the Ukiyo-e period.
“There is certain amount of luxury to be able to really enjoy something that’s visually delightful,” she said, “and that’s about celebrating color and repetitious form. Maybe that’s as crazy as my world gets, but it’s a delight for me to work with it. I don’t want to say it’s ‘not serious,’ but there’s something playful about it that’s not as heavily conceptual as some work you might see.”
"The Floating World," with works by Cathie Crawford, Jenny Knavel, Nishiki Sugawara-Beda and Erika Shiba runs through May 11 in the Joe McCauley Gallery at Heartland Community College. The gallery is free and accessible to the public, any time the college is open.
Hear about Cathie Crawford's printmaking process on a recent episode of Heartland Community College's podcast, Random Acts of Knowledge.
