| DONN RUSSELL, Nantucket Island’s renowned artist and printmaker, creates hand - “pulled” Serigraph prints in limited signed editions. Most of them celebrate that unique dot of land off the southern coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, whose byways and beaches, cobblestones and weathered cottages have lured artists for centuries. | |
Russell opened his own gallery there in the late 1970s in one of the former fishermen’s shanties that cling to both edges of Old South Wharf in Nantucket Harbor. Today the shanties house a colorful enclave of art galleries, handicraft and specialty shops, a ship’s chandlery and venerable granary-turned-bistro. |
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Born in Boston of an artistic family, Donn Russell attended the Boston Museum School, then Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Design and the Art Students League in New York City. His first public acclaim came with winning a top award at a National Academy of Design Annual, followed by ones at Silvermine Artists, the New Museum, Audubon Artists, and numerous others.His work has been exhibited solo and in group gallery and museum shows in this country and abroad, and has been featured in many art and architecture publications, and as illustrations in such periodicals as the New York Times Book Reviews, The New Yorker, Time, Life and Fortune. |
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 207. PHANTOM FLEET Edition: 88 Image Size: 19 x 5 |
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| Russell
has maintained a winter studio in New York’s Greenwich Village and a summer
home, studio and gallery on Nantucket Island since the early 1970s, as
well as periodic retreats in Key West, Florida. Extensive travel has always
been a continuing part of his artistic enrichment. He spends much time
in London, where he briefly kept a studio, and on the Continent, with
journeys throughout the Orient, Mexico and Central America, Greece, Turkey,
Russia and North Africa. A whirlwind round-the-world jaunt in 1989 took
him to Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok, New Delhi, Bahrain and Cairo,
to, as he puts it, “gather grist for my mill of inspiration”.But the remoteness,
simplicity and famous “white light” that surrounds Nantucket Island keeps
drawing him back. It is a natural stimulus for his favorite medium, SERIGRAPHY. DONN RUSSELL’s Serigraph Prints are museum quality limited edition screen prints, all signed and numbered. When editions sell out, the designs are never repeated. Since commercial printing inks tend to fade with age or in strong light, this artist has developed his own printing medium incorporating artist’s oil paint from tubes mixed with the base compound used for screen printing. The color penetrates the paper’s surface leaving a very permanent impression that should last for many years when framed. |
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Serigraphs
-- also known as Silk-screens, although silk, being an erratic fabric,
has long ago been replaced by more durable polyester and nylon meshes,
allowing for more complicated and intricate designs. Each color or
tone in a Serigraph requires its own separate screen and stencil,
and Russell’s pictures can utilize as many as 50 or more. After a
stencil is fixed to the screen, the ink is pulled across it by means
of a “squeegee” - a long rubber or composition blade held in place
by a wooden bar shaped to be held comfortably in the hands. The number
of prints in an edition is predetermined before the printing begins.
Depending on the design, a printing can take from weeks to months
to complete, and since each print is done by hand whose pressure can
vary, no two are exactly alike. It is the artist’s skill that assures
they will all be similarly acceptable visually. That is what is meant
by the oxymoronic-sounding term “Original Print”: they are all the
same basic design and colors, but each is a unique work of art.
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