Ronna Gilbert

Full Transcript

hey um i was born in buffalo new york and uh attended undergraduate school there and received my bachelor of fine arts um then i received a scholarship to study printmaking at the ohio state university where i received my master of fine arts would you like me to go on oh yeah that would be great and then i went to then i i taught at ohio state and then i went to israel and uh taught etching and sculpture at the university in tel aviv for three years and then i moved to new york city and became an art director of magazines for connie nast and i

was in art direction in magazines for about 10 years and now i am doing my own art finally well circumstances i was retiring i was just out of a marriage and i had a lot of friends in this area and i came here and uh explore the art communities uh all over texas actually and i found that in dallas there was a very strong art community so i've ended up driving back and forth from fort worth and i do plan on moving to dallas as soon as i can sell my house because i'm getting tired of the drive but there's a wonderful printmaking community both

in dallas and uh in austin and lots of workshops and lots of camaraderie lots of seasoned printmakers like myself and um i love the community because of that and we're very encouraging uh uh texas jewish arts association the first day i was in synagogue a gentleman came up to me and said oh are you a member of the texas jewish arts association and i said there's an association only for jewish artists and he said well we like to you know promote ourselves but as it turns out the texas jewish arts association is for anyone but i think it's a wonderful organization provides juried shows and

meetings and interesting topics and it's it's just a beautiful community i think i always wanted to become an artist from childhood i mean i always enjoyed creating and designing and drawing and i knew i would go into it at in um very supportive teachers in high school that really stirred my creativity even more but i believe i went into it and it took me a while to figure out why i once had a professor sidney sheafeds at ohio state university and he would constantly say to me rana art can change the way people think and i never quite understood it until i really started working

towards political statements and feminist statements and uh i have quite a few statements about my feelings on the arab palestinian war should it be a two-state solution should it not be so much of my work reflects my political and emotional ideas and this is my way of speaking through art and i think it reaches a lot of people uh whether it's virtually or um in shows today a lot of virtual yeah and i have gotten some feedback on my work and some people agree with it and some people don't and that's great because if i can stir an emotion and make people think that's a

good beginning and that's why i love art if i'm not making a statement i'm not interested in making pretty art or art that hangs over couches um i'm interested in people letting me know me letting people know what my feelings are and i can do it in a creative way that's wonderful and i love it it's my passion i don't think i could be happier doing anything else because it is part of me people ask me that all the time um it's not abstract and it's not quite photo realism [Music] it's almost it's almost illustrative and somewhat graphic um and it's it's a way of

telling a story so if you think about comic books and how each frame of each picture tells you what's going on i guess my work is a frame out of that comic book uh but with semi-realistic figures and very often figures of women in strength so i don't know how to describe it as as much as saying as much as saying it's it's storytelling i don't think i can classify it um i studied sculpture and i welded metal and used other materials in undergraduate school but i also studied printmaking and that kind of once i started printmaking i was hooked and really most of my

life i have done etching in taglio and copper plates then when i came to dallas i met other artists that started combining intaglio with silkscreen with woodcut and that was something i was never allowed to do in during my bfa and mfa programs because in those days in the 70s printmaking had to be very pure you don't combine the two or three but these days i love combining different techniques it's exciting it's fun and um do you want a little bit of a tour oh that would be great i'm here in my garage which i call my studio uh and this is this is a

table i do my wiping of plates on oh and most of my plates and materials are over in this wall which it's a wall that conceals my washer and dryer okay but nobody knows and uh i'm very fortunate to have a press uh quite a large press so i can do you know pieces that are 30 40 inches wide and this is the press it's the floor model and uh that's it this is where i do my messy work and it is messy um of ink all over the place and uh it's messy i've got a soaking tray here for copper plates and it's all

underneath this plastic cover and this ink which is rusting out these inks are rusting out because of the heat in texas but there's a solution in there where i can etch very large plates and i have a great big sink to wash out stuff in and a little crowded in here but it will be better at a different time and i have not used my hot plate but it's over here and i have a music system on it so i can listen to music while i'm working but lately i haven't had to use a hot plate and i have all my solutions and mineral mineral

spirits and turpentine and hard grounds and all kinds of stuff up here and this is only this is only part of it because a lot of it is in the house because i don't keep the heat on all the time so um or the air on i should say the cool air and some of this heat would really as well as a cold it would hurt some of the rollers and stuff like that so and i just got a new garage door which has windows i'm thrilled because it was pretty stifling to work in a in a room without any natural light coming in so

during during this season of covet it's been really a lifesaver my studio i kind of put it together it was just a bunch of storage and i put it together about a year ago and it's working and i'm able to produce my work okay um i st well lately i've been doing something called calligraphs and i use center which is a large piece of plastic and i paint a medium on it which dries and creates texture um let me show you something so you can get an idea and then i after it dries i wipe it up with ink i put it on my press

i dampened paper put the paper on top of it let's see if i can find one of these guys to show you okay i'll take this out into my studio this is this is a my collagraph play can you let me see if i can aim it yeah and it looks darker because some of the ink is set in and i wipe it with ink and a tarlatin and i wipe all the high surfaces clean and the lower surfaces retain the ink it's called relief printing and then i put it on this press after it's inked up and it takes a long time to ink

it up i put it on here right on the metal bed i put the paper on top of it put the felts down then i roll i roll it through the press and when it comes out the other side i don't know if this is clear but when it comes out the other side and i have i would have to roll it all the way through i take the paper off and there's my print and i can continue to do it over and over again therefore creating an addition of prints uh that's what printmakers do they make one plate or several plates for one piece

and they're able to produce it over and over again you know i always say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get the same results and that's what printmakers want to achieve trying to make each print identical and this is just uh kind of a stencil i use it on one of my pieces so that would be kind of the imagery that i showed you on the original plate right these kind of fertility goddesses and making it clear yeah printmaking is using a relief surface an etch surface applying ink however you do it with a roller

if you're using wood you use a roller uh to go over it and it will uh hit the the high spots the roller and not the the areas that you've carved out and that's called wood cut or wood blocks printing wood block printing and the beauty is you can make many many many prints and prints are usually not as expensive to buy as paintings or one-of-a-kind pieces although each print is original because you hand do each piece but printmaking was uh created for artists that wanted to make lots of copies because it became their bread and butter one of the best examples not only just

to not only just to make a living but to make a political statement is um rembrandt goya goya's etchings about the inquisition uh the second inquisition in spain and the uh his statements on the brutality of the church uh towards human beings the inhumanities made quite a strong statement and he was able to get those ideas spread all over the world because he was able to make many many copies of the same idea and that didn't happen too much later than the invention of the gutenberg uh johannes gutenberg invented the press in the 1400s and we were able to create flyers newspapers actually printing the

bible instead of just hand doing everything you could use wooden blocks with letters on them carved out and use them repeatedly to print the pages so printmaking was a convenience a way to spread the word and also for artists that needed money because you know there's not a lot of artists that are rich they were able to make a little bit of money here and there selling their prints and if you know chagall paintings and chagall prints the price is quite different between a print and an original painting yeah so i could maybe afford a chagall print a very small one yeah i do absolutely

i have a few different themes and uh one of them is as i stated before uh my opinion on the israeli-palestinian conflict um as i said i lived in israel and i am a citizen of israel now uh i lived with both populations and it seemed to work fairly well when i was there in the late 70s now there's a wall there's a wall holding all the palestinians away from the israelis and i've i've often done pieces you know illustrating that wall the settlements that are being um they're being taken over by many religious jewish groups uh on disputed land and the government has chosen

to ignore it and at times this this illegal act sometimes they don't ignore it but uh these are still disputed lands it's not fair to any people to do that so that's one of the things i work i often demonstrate in my work make people think about you know what is really going on in israel and what are the politics involved and how fair are they the other uh subject that i find very important is feminism and uh my background on my father's side i'm half sephardic and half ashkenazi so half i guess the roots are from spain uh and the other half is from

what what is now poland uh but this the sephardic side of me which i didn't know a lot about i explored for quite a while and now i'm able to uh do some work that demonstrates um females in upper africa which is where my family was sent to my ancestors after they were expelled from spain in 1492 so i've been exploring the culture of tunisia morocco and the woman's role in that society and they are not as let's say liberated in those countries as they are in the united states so one theme i'm using now is wonder woman since wonder woman came out in the

movie theaters i don't know maybe five six years ago it was banned from arabic-run countries for two reasons it was showing a strong woman and gilgal who is the actress that plays wonder woman was very outspoken about the israeli defense force the idf well the enemy didn't like that they didn't like that they said we're not showing these films in arabic countries as a result uh the women sought out to find these these wonder this wonder woman film and see what it was about and they have gotten bootleg copies you know a lot of people in tunisia have relatives in israel and france and they've

been able to see wonder woman and they have made her their they're idle they're super woman what they want to be and uh often i use uh images of women fertility goddesses slaves that are rising into the form of a wonder woman um kind of like stripping stripping off their garments and underneath is a strong woman and in their mind a strong jewish woman because the actress was jewish so uh that's basically what i'm working on uh you know i do some other pieces that i just fun and not political and not feminist but not many okay i like to just juxta suppose uh bright

colors uh blues and reds and make the figures vibrant and make the areas vibrant the colors i use and i don't always use color but many times i'll use color to emphasize a point uh if i if i'm doing wonder woman and she's clicking her wrists together and as a comic book would have boom claying clash i might make those words and those lightning bolts coming out in color to make a point but i usually i usually uh use color to enhance black and white images know which ones i'm sharing yet but um i think one of the pieces is my my attitude towards the

illegal israeli settlements if i choose that piece and another piece is inspired by tunisian women there's a woman in a mule mule is mule a and it's feminine so i always think of a mule as a female and the two of them are dancing and rejoicing and in the sky there is wonder woman flying by and smiling and looking over them and there's also the bird of israel uh which is called the i believe the huppo huppo bird it's a it's a white and orange and black bird that was it was a bird from egypt but they the israel's believed that the bird flew to

israel just as just as the jews of egypt exited to israel so it's kind of a symbol of finding your homeland and those are two pieces um i have another piece that's a statement on um suicide and how people are often turning a blind eye to the issues of the younger population and how rampant the suicide it's gotten out of hand it's gotten out of hand there's too many young people uh taking their lives for granted and uh one of those pieces is body's diving into water while nobody's paying attention bodies falling from a bridge into water while no one is paying attention another piece

is afraid a frayed ancient rug with both arabic and israeli writing and there's an image on the top with uh bullets flying out because the israeli-arabic conflict has not only caused death within that mediterranean area but also all over the world that conflict affects all of us jewish non-jewish in every country so um and and the frayed rug is kind of folding into the shape of uh of israel people to think about issues they may not feel are important but are quite important and maybe stop for a minute and say you know what is being said ask what is being said why it's being said

and it does it will it make a difference in their lives or can they make a difference by making situations better and maybe open up opening up their minds and seeing more clearly well thank you so much for your time rana you're welcome thank you you