Art collectors are a driving but often hidden force underpinning the art world: They influence the art market, shape the careers and material circumstances of living artists, and help determine which works end up in museums and institutions. Still, it’s a bit atypical to build a show explicitly around the act of collecting art, which happens in the background, but that’s exactly what The DMV Collects the DMV does. This exhibit pulls from the collections of members of the Washington Print Club, a volunteer-run organization made up of artists, collectors, and art enthusiasts, and represents the Kreeger Museum’s latest installment of The Collaborative, a project that showcases other local arts organizations. The resulting exhibit is something of a crash course in D.C. art history that spans more than nine decades and features 49 area artists at various stages of their careers, from local legends to up-and-comers. The earliest works in The DMV Collects the DMV are a series of lithographs by Prentiss Taylor from 1932; the most recent pieces were created in the past couple years.
Now celebrating its 60th year, the Washington Print Club focuses on prints and other works on paper, a broad category that includes photography, multimedia pieces, various forms of printmaking like silkscreens and lithographs, and digitally created works, which makes the exhibit a menagerie of different media and artistic techniques. Looking at the whole body of work in The DMV Collects the DMV, patterns and themes begin to emerge, as well as a snapshot of artists supporting one another’s careers.
Strikingly, many of the works were collected by fellow artists in the exhibit, and these are sometimes placed close to each other. A woodcut by Eve Stockton from the collection of Susan Goldman hangs next to Goldman’s screen print, and a Steven Cushner watercolor owned by Mira Hecht is alongside one of her screen prints. Helen C. Frederick, who founded printmaking and paper arts hot spot Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, is both the maker of a linocut and collage mixed-media piece, as well as the owner of a woodcut by Cheryl Edwards.
This is not an exhibit to rush through—it rewards careful and close looking, with many details to absorb. A cityscape drawn with the tiniest of pen strokes by Ben Tolman has different characters populating various nooks and crannies. Printmaking techniques that subtly build up rich layers and textures are expertly deployed across several works. Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi screen prints on top of mixed-media, built-up textures, and her use of traditional Persian patterns engrossingly draws the viewer in. A wood-engraved portrait by Rosemary Feit Covey makes fine use of shadow, and the patterns underneath the hatch lines of the facial features make the skin appear to glow; the overlay of ripple patterns of Stockton’s woodcut lend it a gentle motion. A print by Leon Berkowitz that, at first glance, looks like a hazy cloud of color on closer inspection reveals itself to actually be made up of impossibly tiny symbols that become pointillism.
Courtesy of the museum
Symbols and diagrams populate many of the works within. Data, wayfinding, and color systems inform Julie Wolfe’s work, and a gouache and ink piece of hers shows a pie chart overlaid with map points or coordinates. Tom Green’s “Message” features a dynamic grouping of glyphs that are crying out to be decoded. A silkscreen by Terry Parmelee emphasizes the masterful printing abilities of the artists in this show. The semitranslucent applications of ink show the order each layer was added in, and the shapes, though abstract, suggest diagrams of movement or calligraphic characters of another language. A mixed-media work by Reneé Stout involves a dizzying array of chart labels, numerals, currency, and explanatory graphics, along with portraits and other ephemera.
Portraits, many with obscured faces, factor throughout the exhibit, and many of these reflect Black identity and place. Zoë Charlton’s collage of flora and fauna stickers cover up a woman’s torso, either growing out of her or consuming her. A portrait generously bedecked with gold leaf by Rozeal is rendered in the artist’s signature ukiyo-e style and shows a pattern across the woman’s face, perhaps a mask, a face tattoo, or a reflection of her true state. Joyce J. Scott’s “Obamalicious” depicts the former president using monoprint and solar print etching, a process that makes the resulting print inscrutable and grainy, and appear akin to an Olmec head. A potential trigger warning for another overtly political work, “Model Citizen (Head)” by Wilmer Wilson IV: The photograph depicts a face that’s been plastered over with “I Voted” stickers, gazing off frame from behind its taped-over eyes.
The DMV Collects the DMV runs through Feb. 1 at the Kreeger Museum. Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. kreegermuseum.org. $10–$15.