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| Collect, lithograph, screen print by Sarah Ellis |
The Salt City Dozen is an international juried print portfolio organized by the Syracuse University Print Media & Graphic Arts Program. The title of the portfolio refers to Syracuse’s early history of salt mining. The Salt City Dozen folio seeks to document the wide range of innovative techniques and unique approaches used by students across the U.S. and Abroad. From the traditional to the experimental, The Salt City Dozen is dedicated to celebrating print as a dynamic medium for visual expression.
Twelve artist will be selected for this portfolio based on JPEGS of their current body of work. Each artist is then responsible for producing an image in an edition of fourteen (14) that best reflects their juried submissions. The paper size for the edition is 15x22” and the prints may investigate any subject or theme. The portfolio cases are designed, hand-constructed, and collated in the Syracuse University Printmaking studios by the university’s graduate printmaking students. In addition to the distribution of a complete portfolio to each selected artist, one portfolio will be entered into the SU Art Gallery’s Print Collection, and one into the Lake Effect Editions Program Archive. Syracuse University Printmaking will exhibit the Salt City Dozen folio in the Sarah A. Coyne Gallery on the SU campus. Other venues are actively sought, including the locations of the selected artist.
This year's Juror was Erica Walker. Walker is noted for using traditional and digital printmaking tools and techniques to design and print large-scale contemporary lithographs that emulate turn of the century propaganda posters. In his juror's statement for the Southern Printmaking Biennale V exhibition catalog, Matthew Rebholz asserted that her work reflects contentious U.S. foreign policy issues and the implications of endless occupation, while other critics have pointed to Walker's use of as a means of highlighting persistent domestic relationships between industry, agriculture, and mechanized warfare. In an exhibition review of Walker's work at Slugfest Gallery in Austin, TX, USA, critic Jason Urban suggests that, as opposed to clarifying any particular issues-based political agenda, the dystopic content of Walker's work instead extolls propaganda for its own sake, and critic Arthur Nodens similarly asserts that "Political stances or calls to action are elusive," and that Walker instead "appears more interested in [an] interaction with the tradition of nostalgic falsehoods, rallying points in discordant times."
