Exhibition Dates: Friday, June 10 – Friday, July 15, 2022
Please review our COVID-19 procedures in full here.
Virtual artist talk: Presented Saturday June 11 at 1pm CDT via Zoom.
Click here to watch James’s talk on Vimeo.
Exhibition Text by Jillian Groening.
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Martha Street Studio is pleased to present HorizonLine/BaseLine, a solo exhibition by James Boychuck-Hunter (AB).
HorizonLine/BaseLine engages with graphic symbolic iconographies, asserting an interest in the derivation of certain graphic sensibilities that surround us, but often go unnoticed. Central themes include the function of visual communication – both as intended, as well as the colloquial interpretations that develop through practical engagement – and communications conventions that mutate over time and as media technologies and processes change. HorizonLine/BaseLine occupies itself with examining structures that inform communication and considers the formal components of signification in abstract and broadly general terms.
HorizonLine/BaseLine hybridizes printmaking techniques, combining etching, woodcut and lithography into experimental constructions, assembling objects from component parts of printed materials. These works utilize a plurality of materials including printed paper, etched and folded steel, cut granite, wire, and steel bar.
Artist Statement
HorizonLine/BaseLine stems from an interest in the geometries of letterform and typographical design. Through print, my aim is to ponder and investigate the architectural sensibility of letterforms. In the graphic alphabetic system predominantly used in the West, the Latin alphabet, the baseline functions as a horizon and letterforms generally sit atop the baseline as though they are bearing the weight of their own elements. Using this baseline/horizon line parallel as a point of departure, I consider the relationship between interventions in the landscape, mounds, megaliths, or earthworks generally, their role as communicators in the landscape and if their sensibilities in any way, conscious or otherwise, informed the convention of elements sitting atop a baseline in the manner that we now take for granted.
HorizonLine/BaseLine posits that a vestigial sensibility of architecture and landscape are reflected in our writing system. It is a musing on an alternative system of graphic symbols that asserts an origin in architecture. HorizonLine/BaseLine considers the plethora of lost or abandoned writing systems that collectively resulted in the letterforms that make up the Latin alphabet.
Artist Bio
James Boychuk-Hunter is an artist working in printmaking, drawing and sculpture. He has an MFA from The University of Tennessee in Knoxville and a BFA from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He has exhibited in the North America, Europe, and Asia.
He has received grants and awards including, a 2019 Boston Printmakers North American Biennial Purchase Prize, first place from in the “CLIP: An International Exhibition of Works on Paper” exhibition, visual arts production grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, as well as numerous scholarships. James is currently a sessional faculty member in the print media department at The Alberta University of the Arts, (AU Arts), in Calgary Alberta.
James can be found online at jamespbhunter.com and on Instagram @jamespbhunter
Exhibition documentation by Sarah Fuller.
