E AST O REGONIAN
WEEKEND, August 3, 2019
Monothon and on and on
Crow’s shadow
Institute of Arts’
regular printmaking
event returned
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
MIssION — the Monothon
needed to slow down before it
could come back.
After a four-year hiatus, the
Crow’s shadow Institute of
Arts’ regular printmaking event
returned on July 22-27, culmi-
nating in a Walla Walla gala
where each of the artists’ works
were auctioned off to the highest
bidder as a part of a fundraiser
for the umatilla Indian Reserva-
tion-based institute.
Crow’s shadow Execu-
tive Director Karl Davis called
the revival “Monothon 2.0,”
because it had undergone a
number of reforms.
Instead of a printmak-
ing sprint where 60-80 artists
worked one of three shifts over
three days, Crow’s shadow
invited more than a dozen art-
ists to work a whole day over the
span of the week.
Davis said the Mono-
thon went dark for a while as
Crow’s shadow turned its atten-
tion toward the institute’s 25th
anniversary.
With its silver anniversary
out of the way, Davis said Crow’s
shadow intends to resume hold-
ing Monothons every other year.
Artists were deep in the
throes of the printmaking pro-
cess on the afternoon of July
23, and each artist brought their
own unique style and experi-
ence to the studio.
Although the gala is over,
the artists’ prints will be avail-
able for sale on an online auc-
tion Aug. 1-9.
Name: M. Acuff
Age: 49
Residence: Walla Walla
the art: Acuff tackled a
familiar subject in an unfamiliar
medium.
the artist and Whitman
College art professor said his
work often deals with cli-
mate change, but his preferred
medium is sculpting instead of
printmaking.
“the thing about climate
change is that it’s hard to visual-
ize,” he said.
the prints Acuff made on
his day in the studio featured
polar bears and melting ice, and
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
M. Acuff paints on an acrylic plate to be used to create a monotype print during Monothon at Crow’s
Shadow studio. Crow’s Shadow studio is a nonprofit arts organization founded in 1992 in Pendleton.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Alx Kujana mixes ink on a plate to use in his monotype prints. Kujana mixed a variety of vibrant colors
for use in his works.
he thought printmaking was a
new way to express his artistic
themes.
Name: Alx Kujana
Age: 32
Residence: umatilla Indian
Reservation
the art: When Crow’s
shadow invited him to partic-
ipate in the Monothon, Kujana
decided to self-impose a fast
on making art so that the cre-
ative juices were flowing for the
event.
A member of the Confed-
erated tribes of the umatilla
Indian Reservation, Kujana
said his abstract art is usually
focused on shapes and warm
colors.
Kujana isn’t a formally
trained artist or come from
an academic background, so
Monothon week for him is about
proving himself.
“I just want to show you what
I could do,” he said.
Name: Kevin Haas
Age: 48
Residence: Moscow, Idaho
the art: A printmaking pro-
fessor at Washington state
university, Haas has recently
started introducing new themes
into his work, like text.
the series of prints he was
producing in the studio were
in stark black-and-white, and
although the images were differ-
ent, the text that narrated it was
all the same: “words are easy,
images just disappear.”
Haas said the the text was
sometimes meant to challenge
the image while other times it
was “cryptically personal.”
Name: Mike sonnichsen
Age: 52
Residence: Moscow, Idaho
the art: While some artists
at Monothon were departing
from their comfort zones, print-
making is right in sonnichsen’s
wheelhouse.
the university of Idaho
art professor said he loves the
“physical presence” of print-
making, and for the mono-
thon, he was using everyday
items as the basis of his prints,
which usually involve geomet-
ric designs.
At Crow’s shadow, son-
nichsen was using the floral
shape of some non-slip bathtub
traction stickers as the basis of
one of his prints.
Name: Yoshi Kitai
Age: 50
Residence:
Vancouver,
Washington
the Art: Although Kitai is
a printmaking professor at the
Pacific Northwest College of
Art in Portland, the art he was
doing at the Crow’s shadow
“was a little bit new” for him.
Kitai’s style of art incorpo-
rates the traditional Japanese
gold leaf design and applies it to
Western themes.
Kitai also had a level of
familiarity with the organizers:
Kitai works at the Froelick gal-
lery, where Karl Davis worked
as gallery director before com-
ing to Crow’s shadow.
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Artists mix paint colors atop sheets of glass to create the desired hues for their work.