Representative of the finest graphic art work of the Southland, this exhibition presents 69 selections by invited artists recommended by the more important local art museums and schools. (And indeed it proves that the professional museum people know what they’re talking about!) All varieties of intaglio, lithographs, serigraphs and woodblock prints are included, although the latter two media are relatively sparse.

Most of the noted printmakers as well as some talented newcomers are included, and their products are truly breathtaking. By developing the intaglio techniques particularly to their most imaginative potentials and by applying new vision to the traditional methods, the artists have reaffirmed the vitality and significance of printmaking today. Among the show standouts are Shiro Ikegawa’s relief color intaglios, especially Jo-Ge, which juxtaposes Pop elements with his Japanese-influenced personal idiom; Leonard Edmondson’s strongly patterned, image-suggestive color etchings, a world away from his former jig-saw organizations; Ben Sakoguchi’s etchings with realistic figures and objects subordinated into total design formats; giant color intaglios by Ernest Freed, with distorted figures engulfed in striking light patterns; and Robert Hansen’s bizarre man-men lithographs, well adapted print versions of his enamel paintings. Equally fine are Lee Mullican’s yellow-gold abstract litho, Tom S. Fricano’s dramatically colored abstract “collographs,” Donald Lent’s negative-positive interplaying Birds, and a strange, dreamlike etching by Judith Von Euers.

––Charleen Steen