Petersbug is going to be screened in this February. Petersburg Area Art League (PAAL) will be opening two new exhibitions beginning February 10th, 2012. PAAL’s downstairs will feature “The Art of Screen Printing”, which will showcase three Richmond artists and screen printing collectives. The upstairs will be host to “HOMAGES: New Paintings by Virginia State University Students”. Both openings will be held in conjunction with Friday for the Arts from 6:00-9:00 P.M.

Screen Printing is an affordable printing technique that many artists and businesses use to make prints, t-shirts, and other media. The process involves pushing ink through a mesh screen to create a print that is easy to duplicate. “The Art of Screen Printing”, features works by Team Eight, Itty Bitty Press, and Shawn Gisriel.

Team Eight is a group of artists, illustrators, designers, developers and screen printers based in Richmond, VA. They collaborate on a wide range of visual projects including original screen prints and show posters.

Itty Bitty Press is a whimsical husband and wife team of screen printers from Richmond, Virginia. With a world full of inspiration, viewers can find in their work anything from nature to music to an overheard sentence usually addressed with the lightest of hearts.
Screen printing is a medium with a wide range of techniques, and they enjoy exploring them. Their illustrations can be transferred to screen by hand using inked vellum, or hand cut rubylith, and/or sometimes digitally produced using halftones. Hand-mixed inks range from opaque to completely transparent, often on the same screen, by exploring the split fountain technique. However they choose to make them, the results are beautiful prints with a pop sensibility.

Shawn Gisriel is a graphic designer and print maker living in Richmond, Virginia. He began screen printing in his mother’s basement in early 2005. There he translated his ideas onto t-shirts and poster board for local music support using different tools to obtain the desired effects. His ideas grew into personal art projects stemming from living in a variety of different circumstances and lifestyles – from run down row houses in Maryland’s Baltimore City to the affluent “burbs” and wildlife of Great Falls, Virginia. His work ties together vibrant colors and busy ornamental patterns with unusual animals that keep viewers smiling as they identify with familiar topics depicted in unusual formats. Shawn’s print work and graphic composition has been displayed at galleries and collectives throughout Virginia as he continues to spread his imagery.

“HOMAGES: New Paintings by Virginia State University Students”, are selections from JC Gilmore-Bryan’s Fall 2011 Painting class at VSU. Included in the exhibition is Robert Henderson’s multi-panel painting of all of the VSU presidents.

PAAL is located at 7 E. Old Street, across from the Farmer’s Market.
For more information about PAAL, call 804-861-4611 or visit www.paalart.org .
PAAL is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission of supporting and nurturing the visual arts in the Petersburg area. Thanks in part to a grant from The Cameron Foundation, its building at 7 E. Old Street in Petersburg has recently been renovated and expanded to include an Education Center. Additionally, the City of Petersburg has generously donated the lot adjoining the PAAL building, which is currently being transformed into a public sculpture garden. All PAAL public programming is partially supported by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.