Sunriver Lodge Betty Gray Gallery presents an exhibition featuring fine art prints by Yuji Hiratsuka with a feature of oils by Sunriver Music Festival poster artist, Joanne Donaca and watercolors by Mike Smith. Hiratsuka and Donaca will be present at the opening reception August 11 from 4–6pm in the upper gallery.
Hiratsuka, a professor of fine arts at Oregon State University-Corvallis, and an internationally recognized printmaker, travels throughout the US to lead specialized printmaking classes for numerous universities. Beginning his career at OSU in 1992, the artist is a native of Osaka, Japan and came to the US to pursue graduate degrees in printmaking at New Mexico State University (M.A.) and Indiana University (M.F.A.).
The artist, using his personally developed and innovative technique, combines chine collé and traditional etching, drypoint, aquatint and other methods to create the limited edition print. Passing the print through the press only four times, remarkably removing the previous image from the plate each time, he adds black and the primary hues successively of yellow, red and blue.
The Sunriver exhibition features prints predominantly of smiling females, using both Asian and American imagery to depict the irony of, perhaps satirize, daily life with its paradoxical interface. The figurative works, whimsically narrative, suggest realities of modern global existence.
A prolific printmaker, his graphic work appears in frequent exhibitions in the Americas, Europe and Asia. He received numerous international awards and his many collections include The Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, San Francisco, The British Museum, London, UK, Tokyo Central Museum, Tokyo, Japan, New York Public Library and Portland Art Museum.
Joanne Donaca, 2012 poster artist for the Sunriver Music Festival, will sign copies of the poster during the reception. Her featured oils include summer images such as sunlight enhanced grapes in vineyards, sunflowers in bloom and luminous landscapes of Central Oregon.
Mike Smith also presents his whimsical watercolors of “animals, places and people that I love.”
The artists will discuss their art during the August 11 reception with complimentary light appetizers and wine. The public is invited to the reception and to the exhibition continuing through August 31, open during Lodge hours.
Billye Turner, art consultant (541-382-9398), coordinates the Sunriver Resort exhibition schedule. September features the Watercolor Society of Oregon Traveling Exhibition of award winners from the spring 2012 convention.