Press Release:
University of Arkansas
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Charles Criner, Artistic Legacy of John Biggers On Display at Mullins
Library
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - An art exhibit currently on display at
Mullins Library
celebrates the artistic legacy of a great educator. In 1949
North Carolina native
John Biggers founded the art department at Texas Southern
University in Houston
(then called Texas State University for Negroes). For the
next 34 years, Biggers nurtured
and encouraged the artistic aspirations of his
students. In the era of segregation, he
urged students to explore their
African-American heritage and to draw the themes of
their art from their own
experience.
http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/3181.htm
Texas A&M University-Kingsville
News Release:
Black Heritage committee plans
variety of events for special month
KINGSVILLE (January 27, 2005) — The Black Heritage
Awareness Committee
at Texas A&M University-Kingsville has planned a wide variety of events to
celebrate Black History Month in February. This year’s theme is The Heart
and
Soul…Commitment, Communication and Compassion.
The month will get started with a kick off reception
from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday,
Feb. 3, in the Ben E. Bailey Art Gallery. The featured artist is Houston-based
Charles
Criner. He creates from biographical images that are reflections of his
childhood
memories and cultural heritage.
Criner was born in Athens and attended Texas Southern
University learning
from painter and printmaker Dr. John Biggers. During his years as a student,
Criner supported himself by working as a sign painter, graphic artist, billboard
illustrator and art teacher. After college, he worked for nearly 30 years as a
staff
artist for the Houston Post and then the
Houston Chronicle.
He is the resident artist at the Museum of Printing
History in Houston where
he operates a studio and leads stone lithography workshops using an antique
press. His work is included in several private collections and has been
exhibited
at the University of Arkansas, the Okane Gallery at the University of Houston,
the Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, the King Center in Columbus, Ohio, Southern
University at Shreveport, Southern University at Baton Rouge, Texas Southern
University and the Tyler Museum of Art.
For more information on any of the Black Heritage Awareness
Month events
call 361-593-3606.
http://www.tamuk.edu/news/2005/january/black_heritage/
Tyler Museum of Art
Charles Criner: Memories Traced on Stone
December 11, 2003–February 29, 2004
Charles Criner: Memories Traced on Stone opens at the Tyler Museum
of Art on Thursday, December 11, 2003 and continues through Sunday,
February 29, 2004. This exhibition was organized by the Tyler Museum of
Art.
Houston-based artist Charles Criner creates biographical images that
are
reflections of his childhood memories and cultural heritage. "My art
reflects my beliefs and the things that I like to do," Criner
explained. "Fishing
has always been one of my favorite pastimes.
Before I came to Houston in
1964, I fished with my brothers and sisters in
the streams of East Texas. My
fishing scenes reflect this. I also love to
recapture the Black experience in the
form of people working in the
fields. I believe that these images are important
and that they should be
cherished windows into our past." . . . more
http://www.tylermuseum.org/press_criner.htm
University of Texas at San Antonio
UTSA hosts African American art exhibit April 1-May 14, 2004
(March 31, 2004)--The UTSA Office of Student Leadership and
Cultural Programs
hosts the art exhibit "People of Color" in the
Durango Building Art Gallery (1.122)
at the Downtown Campus from April 1 to May
14.
The show features 22 pieces by 14 nationally and
internationally known artists
from cities including New York City, Mexico City,
Rio de Janeiro, Atlanta, Dallas,
Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Los Angeles and
Seattle. . . more
http://www.utsa.edu/today/2004/03/31.cfm
University of Houston
Engines of our Ingenuity, No. 1848: Museum of Printing
History
By John H. Lienhard
Today, we visit a printing museum. The University of Houston's
College
of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Since last Saturday, the ancient problem of displaying the
written word
has lain upon my mind. I visited Houston's Museum of Printing
History,
and I realize that, for all I've said about papyrus and paper,
parchment
and stone, writing and printing -- I'd never quite seen the full sweep
of
the subject in one place.
Consider the difficulty: The Rosetta Stone may be seen only in
the British Museum. Gutenberg's press has long since perished. Only 48 Gutenberg
Bibles survive today
and, when they change hands, they do so for millions of
dollars. So this museum
enriches a fine collection of original material with
exquisite facsimiles of the
unattainable treasures. Their
Rosetta Stone is not just a copy, but a casting of
the original.
Their
Gutenberg press is a great hulking wooden machine made by the Pratt
Wagon
Works in Utah. That may seem unlikely but who'd be better qualified to
build
this large wooden structure? The design is based on a woodcut of a later press
that historians deem to be very close to the original. And their
Gutenberg Bible is a
faithful reproduction, a thousand copies of which were
printed in 1961.
Printing is, of course, far older than Gutenberg. We see an
original eighth-century
block-printed Japanese scroll. It predates Gutenberg's
development of movable metal
type by eight centuries. In fact, this scroll was
printed three centuries before the
Chinese first invented printing with movable
ceramic type.
Perhaps the museum's strongest focus is on the machinery of
printing. Here are
the small letterpresses that I've seen used to print fancy
invitations as well as
to foment revolutions. You see early power presses, and
the first offset printing
press. I'm drawn to the Linotype machine, because I
know how it revolutionized
newspaper printing. Using it, you could finally set
type from a keyboard, instead
of having to pick each letter out of a case.
The late-eighteenth-century invention of lithography is well
represented. It
radically changed nineteenth-century newspapers when it gave
them effective
means for including pictures.
I pause in one of the museum's many workshops. Charles Criner,
a fine artist and
a student of John Biggers, is continuing Biggers work with
powerful lithographs
of the Black American experience. We chat as he creates
art, right before my eyes.
The museum dances between process and content. On the walls,
we read pages
printed by Benjamin Franklin, newspapers from Colonial times, the
War for Texas
Independence, the Civil War --. We see pages printed in Mexico,
almost a century
before the Plymouth Colony. Originals where possible and
facsimiles where not --
a room for making paper and another for setting type.
It's all there, the whole sweep. A work in progress. A
soul-settling adventure, from
which to emerge into the slanting light of the
autumn afternoon, here in Houston.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're
interested
in the way inventive minds work.
For information about Houston's Museum of Printing History, see: http://www.printingmuseum.org/
For more on Charles Criner and his lithography, see: http://www.webcom.com/frost/criner.html
or http://www.charlescriner.com/
For Engines episodes on all the many aspects of printing,
click on Full-Text Search of
the Engines site
I am most grateful to Betsy Griffin, Executive Director of the
Museum of Printing History
for her counsel, and to Oscar Graham of Houston's Detering Book Gallery for suggesting
the topic.
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1848.htm
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