Author: Scott Peterson
Art for the Asking: The Graphic Arts Loan Collection Returns With An Exhibition At The Worth Ryder Art Gallery
The Graphic Arts Loan Collection (GALC) at the Morrison Library has been checking out art to UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty since 1958. After two years of being closed due to COVID, the GALC is back this year with an exhibition on campus and a new way to check prints out.
Art for the Asking: The Graphic Arts Loan Collection at the Morrison Library will take place from August 24-September 30 at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery (116 Anthropology and Art Practice Building). This exhibition includes ephemera and prints from throughout the collection’s history, some of which are rarely seen. Francisco Goya, Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, Jean Arp, Edward Gorey, Fernand Léger, Max Beckman, Elisabeth Frink, Corita, Carrie Mae Weems, Le Corbusier, Faith Ringgold, and Ellsworth Kelly are some of the artists that will be represented by prints in this exhibition. There will also be sections in the exhibition dedicated to the winners of the Art Practice and University Library Printmaking Award. The reception for Art for the Asking: The Graphic Arts Loan Collection at the Morrison Library will take place from 4-6pm on Wednesday, August 31st at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery.
The purpose of the GALC since its inception has been to put art in the hands of UC Berkeley students (and the best way to appreciate art is to live with it!), so from September 26-30, UC Berkeley students can come to the Worth Ryder Art Gallery and check-out up to two pieces of art from the GALC’s circulating collection to take home and hang on their walls for the academic year. The prints will only be available to students on a first come, first served basis. Not everything in the collection will be available at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery to check-out these days, but much of the collection will. Please note that the Graphic Arts Loan Collection will not be available to staff and faculty members during this time, but only available to UC Berkeley students.
Starting October 17th, faculty, staff, and students can reserve prints from the collection through the GALC website, where more information about the collection can be found. Any questions about Art for the Asking: The Graphic Arts Loan Collection at the Morrison Library or the GALC can be directed to graphicarts-library@berkeley.edu.
Ellsworth Kelly, Red-Orange Over Blue Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled: Trees With Mattress Faith Ringgold, Jo Baker’s Birthday
2021/22 GALC New Acquisitions
GALC Website
Artist: Breidenthal, Elinor
Title: Bat Kiss
Date: 2020
Medium: Risograph
Artist: Falco, Robert
Title: La Noche
Date: 2019
Medium: 2 Color Screenprint
Artist: Gui, Emily
Title: Remnant
Date: 2022
Medium: Serigraph
Artist: Hernandez, Hector Omar
Title: Manual Labor
Date: 2008
Medium: Mezzotint on Copper
Artist: Hernandez, Hector Omar
Title: Untitled (Skull)
Date: 2008
Medium: Aquatint Mezzotint on Zinc
Artist: Hernandez, Hector Omar
Title: Yin Yang 69
Date: 2011
Medium: Copperplate Mezzotint
Artist: Hussong, Randy
Title: Intaglio (Test Print)
Date: 2012
Medium: Intaglio
Description: Part of Test Print series
Artist: Hussong, Randy
Title: Lithography (Test Print)
Date: 2013
Medium: Lithograph
Description: Part of Test Print series
Artist: Hussong, Randy
Title: Relief (Test Print)
Date: 2017
Medium: Relief
Description: Part of Test Print series
Artist: Hussong, Randy
Title: Screen Print (Test Print)
Date: 2011
Medium: Screen Print
Description: Part of Test Print series
Artist: Jo, Helen
Title: RIP 2020
Date: 2021
Medium: Risograph
Artist: Mubarak, Cinque
Title: 2350 B.C.E
Date: 2021
Medium: 12 Color Screen Print
Artist: Neeley, Kathleen
Title: Downstream
Date: 2021
Medium: Linocut
Description: Part of The Understory Linocut Series
Artist: Neeley, Kathleen
Title: Moss Lord
Date: 2020
Medium: Linocut
Description: Part of The Understory Linocut Series
Artist: Obata, Chiura
Title: Unititled (Jumping Horse)
Date: 1960
Medium: Woodcut
Artist: Okona, Chinwe
Title: Lunar Landing
Date: 2022
Medium: 4 Color Screen Print
Artist: Oparah, Nkiruka
Title: Untitled
Date: 2019
Medium: Screenprint, colored pencil
Artist: Paabus, Kristina
Title: Passage
Date: 2021
Medium: Monotype
Artist: Ryan, David
Title: When I Was Your Age This Was All Orchards
Date: 2020
Medium: Risograph
Artist: Santamaria, Sergio Sanchez
Title: Bajo el Nopal
Date: 2021
Medium: Linocut
Description: Part of the Dioses y Petates Series
Artist: Santamaria, Sergio Sanchez
Title: Dios Encerrado
Date: 2021
Medium: Linocut
Description: Part of the Dioses y Petates Series
Medium: Woodcut
Artist: Santamaria, Sergio Sanchez
Title: Mascara de Guerrero
Date: 2021
Medium: Linocut
Description: Part of the Dioses y Petates Series
Artist: Santamaria, Sergio Sanchez
Title: Quetzalcóatl
Date: 2021
Medium: Linocut
Artist: Sato, Rob
Title: The Mask Collector
Date: 2020
Medium: Risograph
Artist: Schuster, Julien
Title: Boisson D’Avril
Date: 2019
Medium: Hand Colored Linocut
Artist: Sun, Deth P.
Title: Dark Images
Date: 2021
Medium: Risograph
Artist: Takar, Kenny
Title: Back Peace
Date: 2021
Medium: Risograph
Artist: Westerman, Donna
Title: Valley Oaks
Date: 2022
Medium: Woodcut
Artist: Wong, Anita Yan
Title: Pandora
Date: 2020
Medium: Sumi-e Ink Painting
GALC Website
2021/22 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award Winner: Vera McBride
Vera McBride is a 2022 graduate of the Art Practice Department at the University of California Berkeley, and as the winner of the 2021/22 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award, two of Vera’s prints, Sinking and Trick of the Eye, have been added to the Graphic Arts Loan Collection that students at UC Berkeley can now borrow.
Below are some thoughts on the prints and printmaking from Vera:
My work largely reflects a preference for process and materiality. Even if I’m not patient, the process of printmaking forces me to be, and in turn I spend more time considering the making and fine tuning for the next step and the next piece.
Topically, my body of work has been focused on a blending of daydreams, memories, and experiences. These have been the core generative concepts behind the works, and while some end up as whimsical musings, others are more literal and technique driven with a specific moment referenced. The pieces often have repetition and pattern in some capacity, either within the work itself or reworking a concept across many pieces.
The Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award is given to the undergraduate student in the Department of Art Practice who has demonstrated an astute understanding of printmaking techniques, as well as an advanced ability to express themselves through the medium of printmaking. This award was established in 2018 by the Department of Art Practice and the University Library, and is given to one or two students each academic year.
2020/21 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award Winner: Ezra Sato
Ezra Sato is an Art Practice major at the University of California Berkeley. His visual and written work is often experimental and emerges from a desire to play— of wanting to entertain himself throughout the process and to engage with his prospective audience. While he has been drawing from a young age, he started taking it seriously as a practice in high school and has continually worked to maintain that skill.
Two of Ezra’s prints, I MET A GHOST WALKING BACK FROM THE FOG and (Cross-section), have been added to the Graphic Arts Loan Collection, and are available to students at UC Berkeley to borrow. Below are some thoughts on the prints from Ezra.
I don’t know that I have much to say about these two prints beyond the fact that I enjoyed producing them and that I hope they can be similarly pleasurable to observe and sit with. The joy of making art, for me, is often in the revisions— when I’m able to hone in on some detail or apply a method that’ll make the image “complete.” Something that I love about the process is that there is a record of the image as it was being worked through in the form of test prints and prior editions. While those artifacts of the process are not available here, please consider what they might be and play around.
The Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award is given to the undergraduate student in the Department of Art Practice who has demonstrated an astute understanding of printmaking techniques, as well as an advanced ability to express themselves through the medium of printmaking. This award was established in 2018 by the Department of Art Practice and the University Library, and is given to one or two students each academic year.
Kogyo Tsukioka’s Funabashi: The Floating Bridge
By Eva Allan
We had an unforeseeably long time to live with a print from the GALC; we checked it out more than a year ago, pre-lockdown, and then it became our COVID companion artwork. A Japanese print by Kogyo Tsukioka, Funabashi: The Floating Bridge, it depicts a scene from traditional Noh theater. The plot of the play, as described by the writing on the print, involves lovers separated first by a river and then by death–their disapproving families removed part of the bridge and the man drowned, becoming a lingering spirit searching for rest in the afterlife.
In this scene, the actor playing the woman stands just to the left of the center of the print, by the edge of the doorway or big window. On the other side of the jamb, the actor playing the man-spirit stands behind some railings of a bridge. We can see neither his feet nor the surface on which he stands, which helps us understand the supernatural nature of the “floating bridge.” A pine tree, also with an indeterminate base, appears on the left, also obscuring the supports of the bridge. The pine, long-lived and evergreen, could symbolize remembrance, longevity, and steadfast, undying love (as it does elsewhere in Japanese literature).
One of the pleasures of viewing original artwork is enjoying details you can’t easily appreciate in reproduction. With just a few lines, Tsukioka indicates the sag of organic skin under the painted wooden masks. We see the ribbon that ties the woman’s mask behind the actor’s head. The masks and costumes contribute to the theatrical nature of the characters: the man wears a jacket with enormous grey sleeves and a wide-legged blue pants; his mask is exaggeratedly masculine under an enormous wig; his outfit boasts large-scale patterns with big bamboo leaves and twisting black birds, but with subtle grey and blue colors. The fabric of the woman character’s kimono features a delicate, repeating floral pattern, with heart-shaped leaves like a domestic begonia or violet. Long, abstract narrow ribbons and lapping waves pattern her kimono, wrapping around the actor like fingers, and echo the grasp of her hand that holds in the heavy fabric (in the absence of a belt/obi). This fabric may make her character seem more demure and confined, but her kimono features a prominent red-orange fabric, the strongest color of the print, and she is placed just off center, which contributes to the tension felt between the two tragically separated characters.
We hung this print next to our own impression of the Nihonbashi Bridge in Snow by Hiroshige, which my husband bought when he visited Japan for a conference as a graduate student. The prominent bridge in the Hiroshige emphasized the small bridge depicted by Tsukioka, but the juxtaposition brought out many more differences between the prints. The Nihonbashi Bridge was more about everyday people going about daily errands and the busy world of commerce; because of the snow but also because of their tasks they keep their heads down and hurry towards their purposes. The Funibashi: Floating Bridge scene exists outside of the daily rush, outside even of worldly time, in a fantastic, theatrical setting.
Then, the COVID crisis meant that we all entered a stay-at-home lockdown. During this strange time, the Floating Bridge print took on new layers of meaning: the man and woman seemed to be on opposite sides of a big pane of glass, paralleling our own separation from the world. The Hiroshige print, with its bustle, business, and commercial activity, suddenly became cold and unrelatable, as we stopped running errands or hurrying to school and work. We stayed inside, looking out of the window or at a computer screen; our days merged into a timeless otherworldliness. The characters in the Floating Bridge scene became closer to the daily images on the news: they were like the musicians on balconies in Italy, encouraging healthcare workers; like the teddy bears placed in the windows to delight children on neighborhood walks; or the rainbows drawn by children and taped on windows to symbolize hope in the midst of the COVID-crisis. The separated lovers came to resemble nursing home residents and their visitors, separated by glass windows, unable to embrace.
Too soon, the Floating Bridge print became a reminder of the deaths of so many loved ones, now hundreds of thousands on the other side of the bridge of mortality. So many COVID victims had to say goodbye to their families separated by glass or by screens, wearing masks or otherworldly ventilators and oxygen tubes, barred and blockaded from corporal human touch.
In the end, there is that little pine. Both figures in the Floating Bridge scene turn towards it, rather than making eye contact with each other. It isn’t tall, just a bushy sapling really. Tsukioka allows it to come into the woman’s space, although it seems more likely to be growing outside next to the bridge, as in a Japanese garden. This modest pine becomes the symbol of life beyond human lifespan, of hope that the coronavirus wouldn’t keep us separated from our families forever, and of love that could last beyond mortality.
Thank you for allowing us to keep this print during the lockdown time, for waiving late fees and extending due dates. The extra time offered more moments of spontaneous insight. It encouraged long looking in a year when much of our attention was given to the distraction of computer screens. It was extraordinary to live with an original artwork that seemed to gather new harrowing meaning in this unusual and difficult year, and I’m grateful for the extra time we had with this print.
Graphic Knowledge: Perspectives on Prints and Printmaking at UC Berkeley
Come spend your Wednesdays in October from 4:10-5pm learning about the Graphic Arts Loan Collection and printmaking at UC Berkeley. All events will be online through Zoom and open to the public. Registration for each event can be found below or right here.
Registration can be found here for Impressive Art: An Artists Panel on Printmaking.
Stephen Longstreet’s Untitled, Still-Life with Fruit
By Julia Hedelman
So grateful for this program! GALC provides a wonderful opportunity for students who may be limited for financial reasons or otherwise to make their living space feel more homey and comfortable. The pieces I had during my time at Cal were beautiful and I think it’s a lovely way to showcase art that may otherwise be sitting collecting dust in a basement for no one to enjoy. Hope this program can continue for many years to come! Thank you.
2019/20 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award Winner: Madison Nelson
Madison Nelson is a 2020 graduate from the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley. She grew up around horses, and as a result, horses have inspired her from a young age. In her work, Madison aims to capture reality in its purest form through highly rendered, representational drawings. Whereas oil and acrylic paint on canvas informed her work in the past, more recently she has refined her practice to drawing mediums, such as graphite and ballpoint pen, as well as intaglio printmaking. This printmaking technique appeals to her because it requires the artist to patiently plan an entire piece in advance before embracing the many unpredictable outcomes involved in the printing process. Most of Madison’s work is based on photographs she takes, as she believes photography is as close to objective reality as you can get. The translation process from photo to drawing/print then creates an environment in which her viewers can see what she sees, in turn bringing light to parts of reality that are often overlooked.
Two of Madison’s prints have been added to the Graphic Arts Loan Collection, and are available to students at UC Berkeley to borrow. Below are some thoughts on the prints from Madison.


In my two prints, I used subject matter that I am very passionate about: horses and cars. I felt that the Intaglio printmaking process was especially well fit for the image of my personal vehicle because of how much work and planning it took to achieve the final image. Since before I can remember, I had always wanted to own a mustang. With a lot of financial planning and hard work throughout college, I was able to purchase one on my twenty-first birthday. I wanted to commemorate my dedication to achieving that dream with a print of the car. The process and planning it took to reach the final print quite closely mirrors my path to purchasing the real car; for that, this piece holds a special place in my heart and is a reminder to myself that you can do anything you truly put your mind to.
The horse print started out more as an experiment, and having ridden horses for fifteen years of my life, they provided me with a familiar subject that I could comfortably experiment with through a new technique. I put an aquatint on the plate and submerged it in the acid for a full twenty minutes, thereby creating a black print that I then scraped away to reveal the image. This was quite challenging at first because it is difficult to gauge how much pressure is needed to take away the desired amount of the etched surface. Although I am pleased with the final product, I learned how little pressure it takes to achieve more mid-range shades and would go lighter handed the next time I used this method.
The Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award is given to the undergraduate student in the Department of Art Practice who has demonstrated an astute understanding of printmaking techniques, as well as an advanced ability to express themselves through the medium of printmaking. This award was established in 2018 by the Department of Art Practice and the University Library, and is given to one or two students each academic year.
2020/21 GALC New Acquisitions
GALC Website
Artist: Belau, Susan
Title: Arboretum Entrance
Date: 2018
Medium: Etching
Description: Etching and chin-colle. Signed, numbered, and annotated “E/V.”
Artist: Chamberlin, Wesley
Title: Yuba River III
Date: 1986
Medium: Linocut, Woodcut
Dimensions: 34 x 27.5”
Description: Signed and titled.
Artist: Cole, Jennifer
Title: Underlaying Bark
Date: 2017
Medium: Collagraph
Dimensions: 19.25 x 25”
Description: With small chine college drypoint.
Artist: Dadgar, Ali
Title: Art, the New Truth
Date: 2019
Medium: Painting
Dimensions: 18 x 22”
Description: Acrylic paint on newspaper.
Artist: Gisiger, Hansjorg
Title: Les Ecuries d’Augias (The Augean Stables)
Date: 1955
Medium: Linocut
Dimensions: 31.5 x 23″
Series: XX/4
Description: Signed, titled, and numbered.
Artist: Gui, Emily
Title: Untitled, Chairs
Date: 2019
Medium: Silkscreen
Dimensions: 20.5 x 24”
Artist: Marcks, Gerhard
Title: Das Totenhaupt
Date: 1923
Medium: Woodcut
Dimensions: 13.5 x 16″
Description: Titled, dated, and initialed.
Artist: McCloskey, Robin
Title: Departure
Date: 2019
Medium: Etching, Monotype
Dimensions: 19.5 x 24”
Artist: Nelson, Madison
Title: Dark Horse
Date: 2020
Description: Signed and numbered by the artist.
Artist: Nelson, Madison
Title: My Mustang
Date: 2019
Description: Signed and numbered by the artist.
Artist: Orvik, Kari
Title: Marjerie Glacier
Date: 2020
Medium: Photograph
Dimensions: 12 x 15”
Description: Wet plate collodion and acrylic.
Artist: Pauwels, Nora
Title: Aloe
Date: 2019
Medium: Etching
Series: “2/5”
Description: Signed and numbered.
Artist: Pohlod, Meghan
Title: Untitled, Circles
Date: 2020
Medium: Relief
Dimensions: 20.5 x 20.5″
Artist: Stark, Lucy
Title: Feet
Date: 2017
Medium: Silkscreen
Artist: Stark, Lucy
Title: Fruit Salad
Date: 2016
Medium: Silkscreen
Description: Arrangement of four prints designed to resemble tiled wallpaper.
Artist: Stark, Lucy
Title: Trash
Date: 2017
Medium: Silkscreen
Artist: Tachibana, Seiko
Title: fern-butterfly effect h-1
Date: 2014
Medium: Intaglio
Dimensions: 13 x 17″
Description: Signed, titled, and numbered.
Artist: Voulkos, Peter
Title: Abstract II: Ironhead
Date: 1979
Medium: Lithograph
Description: One from a series of five prints, published by Master Editions. Signed by the artist.
Artist: Wunderlich, Paul
Title: Sphinx und Handschuh
Date: 1979
Medium: Lithograph
Dimensions: 21 x 27″
Series: “971/1500”
Description: Signed and numbered.
Rodolphe Raoul Ubac’s Composition & Howard Bradford’s Pacific Coast Tower
By Marcel Moran
Had a positive experience. I searched through the online database, selected two pieces, and picked them up at the library. They have been wonderful additions to our home. I will continue to make use of GALC for as long as I am at Berkeley.