Line OnLine presents a selection of work from the Fine Arts studio classes at Washington State University Vancouver. Line, one of the most basic elements in any design, is as artist Paul Klee puts it, ‘simply a dot out on a walk!”

The works in this show reflect the many ways in which line can be manipulated to create a range of expressions and images, from the most abstract to the representational. Made in a variety of analog media, these works are converted to digital images to accommodate an online platform that has become an intrinsic part of the current times.

The 24th Annual Fine Arts Student Exhibition is online! This virtual show features work made in a wide range of Fine Arts classes from the past year, including drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and 2D & 3D art and design.

In these classes, students from different majors across campus practice the organization and construction of form, the process of conceptual development, and the value of a commitment to craft. The Fine Arts Department at Vancouver believes that mark-making is an essential human activity, emphasizing the connection between contemporary art, culture and the built environment, be it physical or virtual.

You can also check out the exhibit on instagram or facebook.

Rita Robillard is a mixed-media artist and printmaker that has lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest for the last 30 years. From 1986 – 1998 she taught at Washington State University, and from 1998 – 2013 she was a professor at Portland State University where she chaired the Department of Art and the MFA program. “Polarities and Votives” is a mini retrospective that includes selected works from two series: “Polarities: Patterns in Time” (2016) and “Votives for Hanford” (what to do with nuclear waste?) (1996). In Polarities, Robillard explores visual and conceptual opposites by layering 19th century found imagery of the arctic and tropics, while combining photo printmaking, painting and drawing on panel and paper. In Votives, Robillard uses scientific diagrams and religious iconography to address the invisible and incomprehensible threat from the nuclear waste generated from Hanford throughout World War II and the Cold War.

Image > Mode > Bitmap & CMYK contains a selection of work that document a decade-long obsession with the printed pixel and includes a wide array of print media, from woodblock and screen print to laser engraving and 3D relief prints. Custom looping algorithms and corrupted data files are utilized to capture chance, failure, and the loss of information that occurs when translating images between digital and traditional printmaking. While each work uses digital imagery as a starting point (the title of the show is the Photoshop command for switching between color modes), the final work is laboriously and inexorably printed by hand.

The large woodblock print installation (pictured at the top) is made by cutting  sheets of plywood into hundreds of tiny blocks, sorting these blocks into a fluorescent light grid, inking their surface with brayers, and pushing them through an etching press to record their mark on paper. This process is repeated over and over again and the act of printing starts to mirror the algorithms that generated the work to begin with, favoring process and accident over outcome and intention.

Noah Matteucci currently works as the Fine Arts Technician at WSU Vancouver.