Museum lecture to explore past, present of Japanese printmaking

Printmaker and teacher Hideki Kimura.

Printmaker and teacher Hideki Kimura.

Japanese printmaking is the focus of a current exhibition at the Bates College Museum of Art and of a lecture at the college at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

Japanese Printmaking, Yesterday and Today, the lecture by artist and teacher Hideki Kimura, is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8212.

Kimura, who teaches printmaking at Kyoto (Japan) City University of Arts, co-curated the exhibition Redefining the Multiple: 13 Japanese Printmakers,” showing at Bates through Dec. 14. Kimura also presents work in the exhibition.

This lecture is part of a residency at Bates by Kimura and Redefining the Multiple co-curator Sam Yates, director of the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture at the University of Tennessee, where the show originated. At Bates, they will meet with students involved in art, Japanese studies and museum operations.

Hideki Kimura, "Glass 2011-11-27," acrylic ink squeegeed onto glass.

Hideki Kimura, “Glass 2011-11-27,” acrylic ink squeegeed onto glass.

The residency and public lecture are supported by the Bates Learning Associates Program.

The adventurous printmakers in Redefining The Multiple expand traditional concepts of what printmaking is and what form a print or multiple may take. They explore a wide array of imagery through contemporary and historic techniques and media. Media represented in the show include etching, aquatint, monotype, screen printing, photographic processes, woodcut and three-dimensional work in felt, cast resin and video.

Kimura creates monotypes that investigate translucence and opacity by squeegeeing acrylic onto glass. His work is in numerous collections including the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the Warsaw National Museum in Poland, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Kimura is the founder of the artists’ group MAXI GRAPHICA, and recently served as president for the Committee of Art for Print Studies in Japan. He studied oil painting and printmaking at Kyoto City University of Arts, and completed independent research at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Fine Art.

Also showing at the Bates College Museum of Art through Dec. 14 is Selections from Berenice Abbott’s ‘Portrait of Maine,’ ” comprising images from the museum collection that Abbott, a Maine resident and well-known 20th-century American photographer, made for her last book, 1968’s A Portrait of Maine.

The museum is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and until 7 p.m. Wednesdays while Bates is in session. Admission is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.