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Glen Echo Park's Stone Tower Gallery presents intimate exhibitions of work in the Park’s most historic structure. This gallery is a welcoming space for visitors and is well suited to solo or themed exhibitions featuring a small group of artists.
Saturday & Sunday | 12pm to 6pm
Stone Tower Gallery Hours: Saturdays & Sundays, 12 pm – 6 pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 30, 6 pm – 8 pm
The Stone Tower Gallery presents Wrapped Attention, a solo exhibition by artist Leigh Lambert. The artist’s current artistic exploration is based in both fiber and waste transformation. About her work, Lambert says, ”I choose to work in fiber because it is a familiar and universal material. We sit on it, sleep between it, and wear it. It is so ubiquitous as to be overlooked.” She takes advantage of this intimate knowledge to invite the viewer closer, aiming to make the foreign familiar and the known questioned.
Artist Biography
Leigh Lambert grew up in Washington, DC. She returned to the area after graduating with a BA from Colorado College. While her love of fiber started with traditional crafts, such as needlepoint, her curiosity soon led her to explore unconventional materials and applications. She has shown across the country, including New York City and the Atlantic Gallery, and her work will be included in an upcoming Fresh Air Sculpture exhibit in the United Kingdom this summer. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, National Geographic and Stuffed magazine.
Artist Statement
My love of fiber and alternative materials has led me through many experimentations with traditional craft, pushing it further and further from its expected roots. I am process driven and delight in the unexpected discoveries that come from hours of dedicated practice. My current work focuses on the contrast between the man-made and natural worlds –where they collide and how they merge.
Stone Tower Gallery Hours: Saturdays & Sundays, 12 pm – 6 pm
Opening Reception: Friday, May 3, 6 pm – 8 pm | During Art Walk
RSVP (preferred, not required)
Lingering Impressions: Mother's Day Card Make & Take: Saturday, May 11, 12:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Jim Modrick from JEM Creative demonstrates letterpress printing and offers the opportunity to try printing for yourself. Create a hand-printed card just in time for Mother's Day! Recommended for children aged 10 and higher. Limit one card each.
The Stone Tower Gallery presents Lingering Impressions: The Creative Edge of Letterpress, a group exhibition curated by James E Modrick. Lingering Impressions is more than an invitation to see what others have made, but also an opening to step out and create: to make something that you care about, then, after doing it once or twice, discover that drive or yearning to do it again – to make something else. The exhibiting artists work with mostly hand-operated presses and set metal and wood type by hand.
What all six share is a desire to connect others with the letterpress process. Just as they tried it once, “Lingering Impressions” is also an invitation to create that same bond and make something, then discover that drive to want to make something else.
Like any art form, as a potter shapes a pot, this process of working material by hand creates a physical bond between the creator and creative result. This spirit is the connection for this exhibition, which captures the ethos of Glen Echo Park – a place to make things and to see what others have made.
Curator’s Statement
Just over a half century ago, printing was one of the largest industries in the world and most of it was created using the letterpress process. That was the apex of a communication format that took root over 500 years ago (perhaps even earlier in Asia), with the first printing presses. But history evolves and desktop publishing put the rarified skills of typesetting into the hands of everyone, and digital communications rapidly outpaced the demand for printed materials. Maybe printing words on paper would find its way into the recycle bin of history. But, again, history evolves…
Today, a new generation of artists, designers, and crafters have discovered the allure of the letterpress “technology,” and an international movement of people that realize their creative outlet by reviving and extending this classic printing process. This includes many here across the DMV who have found the educational presses and tools that fed a workforce to operate commercial typesetting and industrial printing presses. Printing studios have emerged to make hard-to-find equipment more readily available, and workshop opportunities have extended the practice and created new variations in technique to reinterpret what is meant by the letterpress process.
Six artists that share a connection with the letterpress studio at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, Maryland, have been selected. The work exhibited has the common element of being ink on paper and involving the letterpress process, but a variety of creative interpretations, visualizations, and construction is highlighted to demonstrate the creative potential of this medium and process. Works vary from cards to poster work to three-dimensional constructions and artist books. These artists work with mostly hand-operated presses and set metal and wood type by hand. Like any art form, this process creates a physical bond between the creator and creative result.
James E Modrick
JEM Creative
Participating Artists
Elisabeth Boerwinkel, Sara Blumberg, Lauren Emeritz, Theresa Esterlund, Sarah Matthews, James E Modrick
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