Fri 5/5 @ 5-8PM
Not all of the artists that Bellamy Printz is showing in the intimate upstairs gallery space at her Deep Dive Art Projects in the Waterloo Arts District are established, experienced artists, though most have been so far.
Currently on view is a collection of prints and drawings by first-year Cleveland Institute of Art student Theadis Reagins titled More Gifts, his first solo show. Reagins is a Cleveland native who attended the Cleveland School of the Arts prior to CIA, and was part of several group shows, so he was able to come to the attention of artists such as Printz and printmaker Claudio Orso. Printz invited Reagins to Deep Dive to learn intaglio printmaking.
All of the work has been made in the past six months, unsurprisingly for such a young artist in a rapid stage of growth. More Gifts, we’re told, features “works on canvas and paper that highlight the roles of presence, ideas of displacement and phenomenon, and the roads we travel towards the discovery of an epiphany.” It’s based around a 1514 dutch print of the Adoration of the Magi.
“Learning etching has demystified some of the art of my influences and has allowed me to expand my drawing process into something more intimate and rewarding due to the super engaging process,” says Reagins. “As a result, there is a focus on methods of developing and finding the interconnectedness between the three mediums; painting, drawing, and printmaking. Through the drawings I tend to find a detail that can be heightened to tell a story of that individual, or to tell an overall narrative in company with other works. The discovery of prints on canvas allows me to merge painting and printing ever so slightly into a two-step process by adding white to heighten or darkening with brown after the images are cemented onto the surface.”
Deep Dive Art Projects will be open during this month’s Walk All over Waterloo. For more information, go www.deepdiveart.com.