Gretchen Schermerhorn is the Executive Director of the SGCI – the organization putting on Verified by Proof. We’re also joined by Eddy López and Miguel Aragón, curators for one of the pop-up exhibitions called “Show Me Your Papers / A Ver, Y Tus Papeles.”
Transcript
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Gretchen, I’m going to start with you. Tell me a little bit about what’s special about printmaking compared to other art forms. Why the focus on this?
Gretchen Schermerhorn: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I don’t know about you guys, Eddy and Miguel, but I spend a lot of time explaining what printmaking is. It’s a haptic physical experience. Sometimes it involves a press. Sometimes you’re doing it by hand, but one of the coolest things, in my opinion, about prints and printmaking is that you have multiples, sometimes called an edition. I grew up as a painter, and I was turned on to printmaking in college, and it was like, oh my gosh, I can trade one with you, I can give one to my family, and so you have these multiple pieces of art that then again you can swap and trade, which makes that really fun.
Hernandez: All right, Eddy, Miguel, I wanted to ask you because you’ve curated one of the pop up exhibitions. It’s called “Show Me Your Papers,” or “Haver Y Tus Papeles,” which will be at the Public Shop and Gallery. Eddy, I’ll start with you. Tell me a little bit about what this exhibit is and what you have there.
Eddy López: The exhibition was born out of interactions with Miguel across different SGCIs, where we’re like, we should collaborate on stuff because, our work kind of deals with certain similar topics. I’m an immigrant from Nicaragua. Miguel is an immigrant from Mexico and we’re both printmakers.
So we’re like, is there a way to put together a show that is of course about printmaking, “show me your papers” is of course about showing printmaking, most printmaking happens on papers. But it’s also about the experience of an immigrant, right? When they hit up against either a border or a customs place where their papers are asked to be shown. Could we use that printmaking as a way to subvert that process? Because for many immigrants, that can be a really arduous process, right? You know, some people don’t have papers to be verified by. I came as an undocumented immigrant, so that idea of using printmaking to wrestle with that process for immigrants who come here I think it for me was key to to do this and Miguel was was a great partner in that,
Miguel Aragón: And for me, reading that title of the exhibition, just immediately because of my immigrant background and also knowing Eddy’s immigrant background, I told him this is like perfect for creating this conversation about immigration. And then we are obviously at a time where immigration is on top of everybody’s head, because everything that’s happening, not only on the Mexican U.S. border, but just basically everywhere in the world where all these people are being displaced and being pushed into other countries and just unknown status essentially. So there was something that really kind of shocked me this past summer when Texas decided to put some really big, large orange buoys on the Rio Grande. And then I started following the story and looking at the pictures of those buoys.
And so I made a piece specifically about that. Where in my piece, the buoy is overtaking most of the composition. It’s almost like a looming sort of sun within the piece. It’s approached in a very graphic way. So there’s very simplified geometric shapes. But basically trying to bring the viewer into an understanding that these things are beautiful in a visual way, but at the same time, they are something that are killing people. Endangering lives, pretty much anybody who could get in contact with those.
Hernandez: I mean, going through some of your work, you look at some very violent moments. And I just wondered like for you, just briefly, what is it you’re trying to get me to feel and see, mostly?
Aragón: I am trying to humanize what is happening to people around the border. And so I’m trying to, for everybody to slow down from the, you know, hectic daily life. And to just understand that just because you are not necessarily connected directly to these people. We are still all humans and we all are still sharing this world and we all want to have the same quality of life and happiness.
Hernandez: Eddy, for you, tell me about one of the pieces you want to, you would like to discuss.
López: So of my work, the pieces that I’ll have at the exhibition have to do with a series I started about two years ago. My sister shared with me my asylum papers from back in the eighties. And I went through those, I was a kid, so I don’t remember this stuff. And just seeing the language of the “war refugee” and all of the processing and the bureaucratic nature of the papers. I felt like I needed to make work that responded to that. So I have a small artist book there that shows some samples from my book: my papers, my papeles. And then it has photographs juxtaposed of the border as well, and you can open it, close it, the idea of the bureaucracy and the whole apparatus of allowing immigrants into the country.
Hernandez: This is a big topic, the issue of immigration as we’re coming to our election this November, but what do you want people to think about when they see your work on this topic?
López: I mean, I’m going to echo what Miguel said, because he said it beautifully: We’re humans, and a number of immigrants coming to the border are humans in need. And I think that the best thing we can do is respond as human beings and try to find connections there because we share, it’s a shared experience, living on this planet and our humanity. So if we can center that, I think if I can help people center that idea, I think then I think my work would have been, it’s been worth it.
Hernandez: I know there’s a lot going on, Gretchen, but if you could give me the brief rundown of what we can expect for the person going, what they’re going to be able to experience.
Schermerhorn: Yeah, the Open Portfolio, I like to think of it as the best art swap you’ve ever been to, like a swap meet for printmakers. So artists each get one table. They can give away work, they can barter work, they can sell work. I think it’s my favorite part of the conference because you go in there at one o’clock and you see a whole selection of prints and artists and talk to them you come back at three o’clock and you’ll see a totally different selection. but it’s not to be missed. That’s Thursday, April 4th, 12:45 to 5:30 at the convention center. And that’s free and open to the public. But it’s not to be missed. That’s something that’s a big fan favorite of the conference.
Hernandez: Gretchen Schermerhorn is the Executive Director of the SGCI, the organization putting on Verified by Proof. It’s a conference in Providence this week dedicated to the art and practice of printmaking, graphics, and small scale publishing. We also heard from artists Eddy López and Miguel Aragón, the curators for one of the pop up exhibitions. That one is called “Show Me Your Papers / A Ver, Y Tus Papeles.”