Prints from the "American Epic" Series: Jesse Shaw
On View: February 22nd - March 20th
His work is based in traditions of the narrative, satirical, and political in graphic print, referring to a long history of artists, like Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Riviera, producing social commentary through visual storytelling. Jesse is currently working on a series of fifty prints depicting the epic story of America. He has completed 28 prints in the series, aptly entitled “American Epic” over the past nine years, which deal with history, technology, agriculture, politics, talking heads, and sprinkler heads. Both critical and anecdotal, the prints depend upon a unique iconography - referring to tedium through potatoes and peace through lawn care, and casting parrots, poulty, and snallygasters, among others, to carry forward a web of American parables, new and old.
Jesse Shaw is a printmaker from Tennessee primarily working in relief prints carved from linoleum blocks. Prints from his “American Epic” linocut series have been exhibited nationally from Nashville to New York. Before we met Jesse at “Satellite Art Show” in Miami Beach, FL, he had participated in exhibitions such as “Navigating Currents” Southern Graphics Conference International (SGCI) at the Du Mois Gallery in New Orleans, LA, “Art on Paper” Art Fair, and “New Prints/New Narratives: Summer 2013” International Print Center New York (IPCNY), in New York, NY. Visiting Artist and Guest Speaker appearances include Vanderbilt Divinity School, Nashville, TN, University of Anchorage Alaska, Anchorage, AK, and the University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, NC. Shaw is currently an Assistant Fine Art Printmaker at Durham Press in Durham, PA.