Collaboration 2020 Encore: Ann Chernow and James Reed
OPENING RECEPTION: Sunday, April 16, 2023 from 2:00 – 4:00 PM
A familiar body of work will be returning to the gallery at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking to grant viewers an additional opportunity to see the exhibition Collaboration 2020: Ann Chernow and James Reed. The original exhibition was scheduled to open March 29, 2020. It was soon evident that exhibition dates fell over the starting period of a historic worldwide health crisis during which all activities were put on hold for months. A shifted exhibition schedule permitted CCP to extend the original closing date into the summer of 2020, but this exhibition for which the artists and the Center had planned for years, reached almost no one.
Due to the determined efforts of the artists and the Center, the work in this exhibition is returning to the walls of the Grace Ross Shanley Gallery for an encore. The prints in this exhibition address the alchemy of printmaking as they relate to the prints of Pablo Picasso. The selection of prints in the show are excerpts from an astounding body of work with an unusual origin story. Ann Chernow and James Reed, an artist and a printmaker respectively, combined their knowledge and experience to produce a complex series of lithographs replicating Picasso’s imagery after having conducted an exhaustive technical exploration to duplicate his undocumented printmaking techniques. Together they performed deep research and experimentation, unearthing Picasso’s lost methods over the course of this project. “At first, with several prints, it was just, ‘Let’s try this…It was only after a number of editions were completed that we realized a goal” (James Reed, 2007). As Chernow and Reed continued to create, each print required more elaborate discovery methodologies since the notes from Picasso’s master printer, Fernand Mourlot, were incomplete, and many of. Picasso’s materials were not identified or no longer commercially available.
The resulting series of prints are the culmination of this years-long and incredibly unique exploration undertaken by an artist and a printer in close collaboration, requiring the skills of both to dig into history, chemistry, technique, and driven only by their curiosity and determination to find an answer. Chernow and Reed’s efforts in this project resulted in fifty-three prints that sit squarely within Chernow’s oeuvre using Picasso’s ingenious approach to printmaking, only possible as a result of Reed’s extensive knowledge and skill. “We have worked on this project for five demanding, educational, fun and very satisfying years.” Chernow said. Twenty-five of these prints will be on view at CCP from April 16 through May 21, 2023.
James Reed is a highly respected Tamarind Master Printer, artist, collector, and founder of Milestone Graphics, having collaborated with many of the most coveted artists of the 20th century.
Ann Chernow is an American figurative artist known for her images of women evocative of 1930’s and 1940’s film noir femme fatales, longtime artist collaborator with Reed for various lithography print projects.
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