Stripes Stripes Stripes | Monoprints with Polly Apfelbaum and Jamie Nares

  • Polly Apfelbaum with Durham Press Stripe for Stripe woodblock monoprint uniques series
    Polly Apfelbaum | Stripe for Stripe (2024)
  • Durham Press has had a long history of collaborations with Polly Apfelbaum and Jamie Nares, two artists who have developed distinctly different visual languages in their print work but even in their different worlds they have touched on a common theme: stripes, stripes, stripes.

     

    Seen through the lens of Apfelbaum and the vibrant patterns of her characteristic woodblock monoprints, the stripe becomes another tool to engage with color theory as she manipulates structure and composition. Translated through Nares’ eye, we see delicate marks which capture her brushstroke with a new sense of looseness and immediacy.
  • Polly Apfelbaum with Durham Press Solar Eclipse woodblock monoprint unique series
    Polly Apfelbaum | Solar Eclipse Mini 3 (2024)
    Apfelbaum first began to experiment with the stripe in her Rainbow (2008) monoprint series, but has recently returned to this motif with fresh eyes in Stripe for Stripe (above) and Solar Eclipse (right). These woodblock monoprints begin with a structure that remains constant across each series, a formal framework to work intuitively, thoughtfully, and playfully, with color and composition – as we have learned while working with Apfelbaum, constraints often give birth to creativity.

     

    Stripe for Stripe stacks horizontal stripes into pillared forms, layering thick and thin bands. Some seem to compress with density, others begin to drift upwards as stark white space relieves that pressure. Apfelbaum contains this sense of directionality in Solar Eclipse as shesurrounds these stripes in a circular border. Heavy or light, contrasting or monochrome, these stripes not only respond to each other but now interact with the background color that encircles them. Some contract and vibrate with energy while others seem to expand beyond their circumference, like the sun and moon passing through moments of light and dark, dense and sparse, passing through their own cycle.

     

    Visit our viewing room to learn more about these new monoprints.
  • James Jamie Nares at Durham Press Iron Horse series Screenprint monoprints (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    James Jamie Nares at Durham Press Iron Horse series Screenprint monoprints (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    James Jamie Nares at Durham Press Iron Horse series Screenprint monoprints (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    James Jamie Nares at Durham Press Iron Horse series Screenprint monoprints (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    Jamie Nares | Iron Horse 6 (2015)

  • Jamie Nares painting High Speed Cone Drawings Uniques at Durham Press
    For Nares, the stripe becomes a record of her own hand. This is a language deeply tied to her work with Durham Press, both through her brushstroke screenprints and High Speed Cone Graph etchings and uniques – two methods of mark-making which come together in her Iron Horse monoprint series (above). These screenprints, originally created in 2015 but now released for the first time, combine the process Nares later uses in her High Speed Cone Drawings (left) to create each mark with the printmaking technique of her brushstroke editions with the Press. Each expression is translated into screenprint, though now experimenting in a monoprint format. Iron Horse holds mechanical movement in its vertical lines but is still dominated by the presence of human variation, creating life even within its fixed screenprinted layers.
  • Nares transforms stripes into a gentle, translucent language as she approaches her mark with a new sense of spontaneity in her Watercolor Monotype series (below). Composed by painting directly onto plates with watercolor paint, these works capture the moment as hand connects to brush, brush to plate, with the natural looseness of watercolor. As the paint pools and flows beyond the edges of her original stroke, these Watercolor Monotypes are subdued in color but innately unable to be contained in their original structure. As if the inverse of Apfelbaum’s stripes where structure sets her free, Nares uses this unpredictability to submit to the interaction between hand and medium to create a record of how her mark evolves after leaving her brush.
  • James Jamie Nares at Durham Press Watercolor monotype series
    Jamie Nares | Watercolor Monotype Large 4 (2021)
  • Learn more about our many other editions, monoprints, and uniques with Polly Apfelbaum and Jamie Nares on their artist pages. All works are available directly through Durham Press, please contact us at sales@durhampress.com for more information.