Professor of Printmaking Exhibits in Mexico Alongside MFA Alum
Decades separate the artistic careers of Professor of Printmaking Hester Stinnett and Tyler alum Ron Abram (MFA ’86), but their artistic practices connect through a shared interest in the personal significance of archival materials, as demonstrated in a duo exhibition at the Museum of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.
The exhibition, Lo Personal Se Imprime / The Personal is Printed: Hester Stinnett & Ron Abram, was curated by Tyler alum Gilberto López-Elías (MFA ’21), whom Stinnett taught when he worked on his MFA in printmaking during a leave of absence from teaching art history and printmaking at the University of Guanajuato.
López-Elías spent his first year in the program at Temple Rome, where Stinnett was teaching at the time. They stayed in touch for the duration of the program and have remained in contact ever since..
“As an established artist with a significant exhibition record and clarity about his work before coming to Tyler, our conversations were expansive,” Stinnett recalled. “Living and working in Rome, home of the Vatican, for a year was a key influence on his work which, as he has written, ‘through cultural cannibalism of art history, popular culture and social media… performs personal capriccios in dialogue with Christian and Catholic representational hegemonies.’”
Upon graduation from Tyler, López-Elías returned to his teaching position at the University of Guanajuato, where he also works in their gallery program and curates shows for their museum.
He proposed The Personal is Printed to the museum and curated all aspects of the show, bringing together the work of Stinnett and Abram, a professor of studio art and queer studies at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
This exhibition marks the first time Stinnett, who retires December 31 after 40 years at Tyler, and Abram have shown together, despite knowing each other for many years.
“I’ve always respected and admired Ron’s work for its conceptual complexity and richness,” Stinnett said. “He was one of the first printmakers that I knew who was starting a critical dialogue about the work of queer printmakers. He began organizing and presenting portfolios of queer work at national printmaking conferences attended by educators, curators and writers. Now, more than 15 years later, the ideas and work that Ron brought to the forefront are woven into shows and curricula across the country.”
Abram’s work in The Personal is Printed follows this ongoing commitment. Through a series of prints entitled Wrangler, drawn from historical gay erotica source materials, he explores intimate relationships, power dynamics, gender roles, and toxic masculinity.
Stinnett’s work in the exhibition asks what happens when the information underlying daily rituals is lost, exploring the physical remnants of her mother’s progression into dementia through handwritten notes that Stinnett later found and collected.
“Effortless and taken for granted, these rituals—locking and unlocking the front door, or signing your name on a form—are the background of our lives, until, as in my mother’s case, simple tasks, once done with ease, become overwhelming,” Stinnett said. “[Her notes] record her struggle to remain tethered, through writing, to daily rituals. The touch, which may be clear and purposeful, or impatient and agitated, careless or confused, reveals the author”.
“In my prints, I pair images of discarded book covers shorn of their pages, with handwritten phrases from my mother’s notes. Erasure is a key element in these prints, removing parts of their physical history just as my mother lost parts of her history.”
Both artists utilize the varied elements and techniques of printmaking as a medium, showcasing how they can embody representations of personal experiences.
“Presenting our work intermixed on the walls of the museum highlights how expansive the vocabulary of prints is,” Stinnett explained. “Conceptually, our ongoing creative research aligns through a shared interest in using source material found in archives of personal significance and bringing these elements forward in our work.”
“[The] materials from previous generations of experience continue to hold personal and universal meaning,” she continued. “Shown together, my erased Riso prints, with their subtle layers of color, interact with Ron’s raw, deeply incised intaglio prints, and encourage viewers to consider the diverse languages of printmaking.”
Much of Stinnett’s work in the show was created with support from the Dean’s Grant for Faculty Research, which is awarded to full-time faculty at Tyler to support development of their work. Stinnett was selected for 2022–2023.
Lo Personal Se Imprime / The Personal is Printed: Hester Stinnett & Ron Abram is on view through January 19, 2024.