Large-scale woodcuts by Tracy Lang at Kittredge Gallery in Juxtaposition, October 12 - November 29
October 10, 2008

Tacoma, WA – The nature and figurative images of Tracy Lang’s work are invested with an immediacy and sublime power that is as much a function of the artist’s visceral embrace of the material and the act of cutting the wood, as it is a function of their grand scale. The prints are so large that Lang prints them with her feet instead of the press. While the exhibition will include one wooden plate at its outset, it will be replaced by an impression made from it by a team of University of Puget Sound students working with the artist.

Although fascinated with the figure/ground relationships and physicality of printmaking, Lang chaffed against the historic roles of relief printmaking as religious and political communication. She began printing in dimensions more traditionally associated with abstract expressionist painting than the more book-influenced print tradition. Made through a vigorous process, her prints course with light and speak of a deep connection to nature and joyous celebration of surface. In her artist statement, Lang writes:

Art mediates arguments I have with God.

The dull weight of traditional constructs rub against my feral sensibilities…Each print is a shedding of skin and a notch on the fence post. When I carve I can reduce the world to simple forms and eliminate confusing contradictions, revealing the invisible by creating an eddy in the current of modernity. Printmaking is a way of collecting time, marking our days with blades and ink.

The glorious peel of paper from the matrix to give an opposite, the harmony of a mirrored image. I dream of the very first print and the lovely surprise rewarded to that individual, who pressed something soft to the pigmented glyph in rock.

Born in Florence, Ore., Lang studied with Pacific Northwest painter William Cummings after moving to Seattle. An alumna of the Artist Trust’s Arts Edge program, Tracy Lang has had numerous exhibitions in the Pacific Northwest. Her venues have included Bainbridge Arts and Crafts, where she won the Amy Award, Baas Gallery in Seattle, and the Ochi Gallery in Ketchum, ID.

Kittredge Gallery is a venue for contemporary art, exhibiting work by noted regional and national artists. The gallery serves as a teaching tool for the art department and a cultural resource for both the university and the community at large. Exhibits and talks are free and open to the public.
Kittredge Gallery Location: University of Puget Sound, N. 15th St. at N. Lawrence St., Tacoma, WA Map: www.ups.edu/campusmap.xml  
Regular Hours: 10 a.m.–5 p.m., Mon.–Fri., noon–5 p.m. Saturday*
Additional Hours: Sunday, Oct. 12, 4–6 p.m.
* Please note that the gallery is closed Oct. 18–21 for fall break.
Web: www.ups.edu/kittredge.xml  

For additional information call the art department at 253.879.2806. Print quality images are available at www.ups.edu/pressphotos.xml.

CONTACT
mediarelations@ups.edu
253.879.2611
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