Andrea Callard
Andrea Callard’s interdisciplinary cultural practice moves through fine art, communication media, education, and other areas of inquiry. Callard was an early member, officer, and documentarian in the artists' group COLAB. In 1984, Callard was invited by Gail Nathan, the Anderson Gallery, and the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to make lithographs with master printer Barbara Tisserat and to teach Nathan's painting and drawing classes for a month. As a result, Hallway Warbler and Warm Perch/ Mad Times were published by the Anderson Gallery.
Also in 1984, Callard was invited to design a poster for Claribel Alegria's reading from Flowers from the Volcano, when New York artists were protesting the mining of the harbor in Nicaragua by the U.S. Jolie Stahl and Christy Rupp, also COLAB members, helped Callard print the poster at the Lower East Side Print Shop. The oil based inks and solvents used at the time made them sick so they decided to pursue water-based and non-toxic inks in future projects. At that time, printmakers were dismissive of new water-based inks being introduced.
Christy Rupp was a resident artist at Art Awareness in Lexington, NY that summer. Jolie and Andrea visited her for the Labor Day weekend. They found the disused print studio and proposed to reactivate it the following year. The studio had originally been set up by the Tilletts, well-known textile designers related to Judd Weisberg. Working with Pam and Judd Weisberg, NYSCA funding was secured by Art Awareness for a screen printing studio as well as a welding studio where Ann Messner, Jody Culkin, and Christy Rupp would teach themselves to weld the following summer.
Callard's early super 8mm films were preserved through funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation and screened at Ambulante, the 56th Oberhausen Short Film Festival, DOXA, and others around the world. The Museum of the Chinese in America, MOMA, the New Museum, the Whitney Museum, the New York Foundation for the Arts and many others have presented and published her work. She received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and public funding for various other group projects for making new art works.
Flypaper
1986
screen print
edition size: 30
6 colors on Mulberry paper
with white border
image: 30"h X 22"w
”What’s up with the bats?” asked an urban visitor, a psychiatrist. Another print shop visitor recalled a visceral childhood memory of actually seeing bats stuck in flypaper. Bats swooped in curvilinear motion late at night while artists focused on details in the print studio.
Callard's beloved grandfather was an active conservationist but wrote her a story about chasing bats out of his furniture store with a pole.
Barn Theater
1985
screen print
edition: 28
image: 22"w X 30"h
11 colors on Somerset
Barn Theater commemorates a special summer evening in Lexington, NY. It was opening night for Green Plays, a theater group in creative retreat from the Hollywood film wars. A few fabulous thespians from the WOW Café on New York City’s Lower East Side were paid to paint the porch and alleviate the long term deprivation of maintenance.
The preparation flaunted a superstition about bad luck and the removal of the nests of a community of barn swallows. Later, an eager waiting audience of ninety eight people was standing on the porch when it dropped three feet. No one was injured. No one went home early. Frogs at the Mountain wall was also made the first summer. Old Wood/ New Life was made in 1987.
Frogs at the Mountain Wall
1985
screen print
edition: 10
image: 15"h X 18"w
6 colors on Rives BFK
Large frogs populated an abandoned swimming pool in the middle of the Art Awareness grounds in Lexington. In the lush valley, new weather moved swiftly between us and distant cows.
Fifty artists of diverse disciplines produced an urban energy. Everyone seemed compelled to contemplate the decay of the pool. We were grateful that the town dammed the summer river to provide an exceptional swimming place.
Old Wood/New Life
1987
screen print
edition: 25
image: 22"w X 30"h
8 colors on Rives BFK
Old Wood/New Life reflects Callard's connection to elders and landscape. Inspired by a drive through the American Southwest with her mother, her mentor, and her baby to visit her grandmother, Callard brought the feeling back to the Lexington studio.
The memory of the red Oklahoma clay became the spots seen in this print. In the next layer, a rubbing from her cabin doorstep emerged as a veil of blue haze. The central image of the tree comes from a lively old tree in front of the gallery, but it also embodies the spirit of her elders.