+ Currency Part 1 - University of Alabama at Birmingham

Currency Part 1: Modes of Expression is, in many ways, a very traditional
exhibition. It contains the largest collection of contemporary print works made
with traditional media that has ever been exhibited at Artlab. And, in many
ways, this observation was initially an impediment. My reservations stemmed
in part from my own inability to critically position printmaking as a contemporary
discursive practice, a reservation that was dispelled by my conversations with
professor and printmaker Derek Cracco. My reticence was exacerbated by what
I perceived as printmaking’s emphasis on technique – something that while not
unimportant, was not and still is not my primary criterion for evaluating a work of
art. Here is a contemporary dilemma, one in which I perceived that the value of