The 31st Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition opened on March 9th and ran through April 13th. This year's Bradley International featured 122 works of art by 109 artists. The opening reception on March 9th was staggered between the galleries.

Paul Krainak, the Chair of the Department of Art said, "The Bradley International has, in its various manifestations, been a benchmark for works on paper for more than 50 years. Consequently it has represented influential trends in printmaking and drawing for generations of artists in the U.S. and now increasingly on a global setting. The exhibition has a populist format. Diversity and change are encouraged in a university setting that nurtures free expression through a transparent process in which rotating juror/curators scrutinize responses to an open call for artworks. The show has never precluded any artist that is independent of a market or community. Nor has it promoted a particular school of thought or practice. Rather, it seeks to present art that defines its own terms of craft, criticality and vision."

The show is literally defined by the artists’ enthusiasm for mediums used on paper and a commitment to expanding a language built upon the history and technology of prints and drawings. Producers in these media have looked to this exhibition to express subjects and forms that characterize the light of a particular moment in time with freshness, intelligence and autonomy. Drawing, printmaking, and photography, as studio rituals, tend to serve the idea that images beget images---a modernist axiom that asserts that meaning lies in the contingencies of production and that these contingencies are based upon a conversation with previous works. This process tends to marginalize subjects external to the production of the work. But it prioritizes the pushing of formal and conceptual boundaries, the articulation of new language, and the delineation of fresh contexts for critical analysis.

Even with an increased conceptual framework, prints and drawings remain intimate, biographical, linked to history, and subsequently to cultural memory. This builds consensus among artists without creating a closed system constructed of style. The result is a medium with a spectrum of activity that ranges from iconographic research on the one hand to the physical labor of production on the other. This is a more grounded way to consider any contemporary art form as connections to ordinary tasks and craftsmanship and the links to tradition are complex and profound. The artists in this exhibition theorize the world through a specialized text made up of two dimensional composition, design, texture and color that improvises on a web of aesthetic sensibilities bracketed by ordinary experience. Works on paper are both actual and fictive, suspended between the life of the artist and the machine of culture. In this exhibition we have the opportunity to observe how mature and developing artists are contributing to the next significant stage of an enduring visual discourse as they round out an art world that is occasionally compromised by spectacle and technology.

March 9th Reception Locations

Bradley University
Hartmann Center Art Gallery
Reception: 4:00 – 6:00
Heuser Art Center gallery
Reception: 5:00 – 7:00

Peoria Art Guild
203 Harrison, Peoria, IL
Reception: 7:00 – 9:00

Contemporary Art Center
Riverfront Arts Center at 305
Southwest Water Street, Peoria, IL
Reception: 8:00 – 10:00

Director's Statement

Since its inception in 1950, the Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition has become one of the premiere competitions of works on paper to take place in the country. The history of prestigious jurors affiliated with this exhibition has attracted an international pool of emerging and established artists that span several generations. The resulting shows have seen a vibrant dialogue between images that remain anchored in traditional uses of graphic media with images that declare themselves by extending those parameters.

The 31st Bradley International embodies the vision of Judith K. Brodsky who has served as juror. A distinguished artist and Professor Emerita from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, she also started the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper in 1986. She envisioned the center as an international hub where artists of stature would collaborate with master printers and papermakers to create new works in print and handmade paper. In recognition of her vision and inspired efforts in the realm of contemporary printmaking, the center has been renamed, the Brodsky Center for and Print and Paper.

In her own work as an artist and printmaker, Brodsky explores themes that reflect contemporary intellectual, political and social issues. She lectures internationally and her works are in museum collections worldwide. Brodsky has presided over many organizations, including ArtTable, the College art Association and the National Women’s Caucus for Art. She is board president for Philagrafika, a major international art festival being planned for 2010 in Philadelphia.

Our mission as a University Gallery is to create a challenging environment that stimulates discourse among students, faculty, staff and the public as they explore the range of ideas addressed in contemporary art. The Bradley International provides a forum for artistic research that reflects diversity in attitude and approach.

Juror Judith K. Brosky's Statement

Selecting the prints and drawings for the Bradley International was exhilarating and provocative. Looking through the submissions from around the world led me to several thoughts.

First, I found several distinct directions among the prints. There were only a few formal art for art's sake explorations of shape, color, and texture while many artists tackled different kinds of narrative--dream imagery; autobiography and other real life themes. There were also a significant number of prints that addressed anti-war and political themes. From a formal perspective, the submissions showed the influence of new media--digital prints are now quite sophisticated--and of painting and installation--there were more than a few submissions that only made sense as modular images and several that were very large in scale. Even though artists had submitted images as individual works, I felt in many cases that entire groups of prints (and drawings) submitted needed to be seen by viewers; otherwise the viewer might not fully grasp a work. Examples are "Tourist Series," two works by Nicholas Gagliardi, three submissions by Derrick Buisch, consisting of "Pink Flag," "Surgeon's Girl," and "Strange," and Barbara Ryan’s "Captain Extract, Chaplin Extract, and Ensign Extract". These groups of prints began to approach book format in that more than one image is necessary to convey the artist's intent. And I began to think of them along with the books that had been submitted. Indeed, the books showed the strength that this format has in today's print world.

Overall, the split between more traditional prints and prints that explore new directions raise questions that a number of people involved in print theory have recently posed. Does the print lose its identity and integrity as an artistic discipline through transformation of scale and usage? Or does the blending of the print with stylistic devices usually associated with painting like large scale, or contemporary art forms like installation signify that the print is integrated into artistic practice more than ever before? I would argue the latter. The printed image has moved out of its own realm and become integral to painting and even three-dimensional work. As Jose Roca, the recently appointed artistic director of Philagrafika, an international print festival scheduled to take place in Philadelphia in 2010 says, the printed image is the "graphic unconscious" in today's art.

I found many of the drawing submissions wonderful as can be seen from the number of Honorable Mentions I awarded, and like many of the print submissions, the drawings also expanded the concept of what we consider drawing. There was less emphasis on description although there were also some marvelous narrative drawing as in the series, "Force of Habit," by Juliet Jaeger, to which I awarded Best in Show. The richness of the color work often approached painting but retained the beautiful look that only paper can convey as in Darren Goins’ image "555." I very much felt that the artists considered their drawings as finished works of art, not as preparatory to paintings or prints.

I look forward to seeing the exhibition, with individual works in the context of the rest of the show, i.e. the installations, the series, and the individual prints and drawings that impressed me so much individually. I hope that viewers will find my selections as interesting and provocative as I did the submissions.