Call & Respond
January 13 - February 10, 2018
ICOSA was pleased to present, Call & Respond, a two-person exhibition of works by Andrew Blanchard and Jonas Criscoe held in conjunction with Print Austin. Taking inspiration from the musical form of “call and response”, both Blanchard and Criscoe utilize imagery through the lens of printmaking to construct works that skew the context and meaning of the original. Employing the use of appropriated imagery, back road photography and reclaimed materials, both artists impart a sense of history and nostalgia through the surfaces of their works while simultaneously mirroring our hyper visual world.
Andrew Blanchard was born in the wild swamps of Louisiana and raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Like most boys who grew up next to a beach, he fished and swam until the ring of the dinner bell. A proud graduate of Ole Miss’s MFA program, his imagery delivers an honest commentary on the cultural character of the American South. His mixed-process prints on wood and paper have been included in hundreds of exhibitions and have been collected in Bulgaria, France, Hawaii, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Blanchard’s work was recently added to the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and the Mississippi Museum of Artin Jackson, and it is featured or forthcoming in publications including Ecotone, Electric Dirt, Printmakers Today, New American Paintings, the International Painting Annual (nos. 4 and 7), and the Oxford American, which in 2012 named him among the New superstars of Southern Art. Blanchard is currently the Director of Studio Art and an Associate Professor of Printmaking and Photography at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His work is represented by Southside Gallery in Oxford, MS and M Contemporary Gallery in New Orleans, LA.
Jonas Criscoe is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the United States, most notably the Minnesota Museum of American Art, The Texas Biennial and the International Print Center in New York. Criscoe has also been featured in various art publications, Including Art Lies and New American Painting and has been a Jerome Fellow at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking and a West Prize acquisition recipient. A native of Austin, Texas, he received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and the University of Texas at Austin, and his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently, he is on the editorial board of DIALOGIST, a journal of Poetry & Art, on the Faculty of the Art School at The Contemporary Austin and a founding member of ICOSA.
Press/Reviews
- Review by Melany Jean, The Austin Chronicle