In the 1970s, when Amherst printmaker Joyce Silverstone studied painting and early video at the Museum School in Boston, she developed a way of making printed drawings and studies for paintings that remains central to her practice today.
“I have always worked to record my experiences of paying close attention to natural forms,” says Silverstone, 62. “In addition to the drawn lines of printmaking, I am also interested in the way collage allows me to explore the physical edge of printed papers.”
Hampshire Life: What are you currently working on?
Joyce Silverstone: I am bringing together printed materials made from my relief plates, paper lithographs and monotypes printed on transparent and thin papers, assembled and constructed in my studio.
H.L: What is your creative process like?
J.S.: I work at Zea Mays Printmaking, a shared studio space in Florence and an artistic hub in the Valley for printmakers. Being part of a community of artists is important to me. The studio has a special focus on educating and experimenting with less-toxic methods of making prints. Exposure to new processes and techniques has taken my work in directions I might never have explored.
H.L.: You teach printmaking. What does that add to your artistic experience?
J.S.: Having the opportunity to teach, having daily conversations about process and content, enriches my naturally inward-focused creative practice.
H.L.: What inspires you to make a new piece?
J.S.: I get absorbed by the open-ended moves of monotype and collage. It’s a responsive, dance-like process.
H.L.: How do you know you’re on the right track?
J.S.: I feel surprised, and then I recognize something that resonates with a sense of place, time and memory held by both mind and body.
H.L.: What do you do when you get stuck?
J.S.: Get outside, move, walk, go swimming, and continue to show up to work in the studio every day.
H.L.: How do you know when a work is done?
J.S.: I visit with them for a while and then I see one that I can work back into — where I can make some formal discoveries, if I make small shifts in composition, color or shape.
H.L.: What did you do today that relates to your art?
J.S.: I am a somatic awareness practitioner, with a private practice, Rosen Method Bodywork. I use a listening touch to notice and respond to changes in muscle tension and breath in the body. This discovery process is similar to paying close attention to the felt sense of drawing and noticing when a new way of seeing something opens up.
H.L.: How have you maintained your life-long art-making practice?
J.S.: It is important to find a small group or even one person who can respond to your work — someone who becomes interested in all the evocations, echoes and implications that your work holds. This moves you forward, becomes your “audience.”
— Kathleen Mellen
Works by Joyce Silverstone will be on view locally in the following exhibits:
Patterns in Nature” (June 17-19) and “Scrolls, Extensions and Overlaps” (Aug. 3-6) — at Zea Mays Printmaking, 320 Riverside Drive, Florence, www.zeamaysprintmaking.com
“Monotype” (May 7-8); ”Monotype and Collage” (Oct. 3-7) — at Snow Farm — The New England Craft Program, 5 Clary Road, Williamsburg, www.snowfarm.org
For more information, visit Joyce Silverstone.com.