“…Through the loaded iconography of the pearl, Calgary based artist Kim Huynh’s series of lithographic prints, hole/whole, speaks of the interconnectivity of our personal desires of accumulation and its affects on the destruction of our environment, within a collective culture of capitalism and globalization.

The pearl has a long history of being associated as an object of desire, a symbol of luxury and opulence. This gem of the sea, according to Pliny in the 1st century, ranked first in value among all precious things and in fact Servilia, the mother of Brutus wore ” the spoils of nations in an ear changed to the treasure of a shell”. In the Chinese tradition the image of the pearl symbolizes riches and pure intentions. Huynh effectively illustrates the true meaning of the word “luxury”; the lasciviousness, the sinful, self-indulgence, through its image. The sheer number of pearls, draping, piling, gathered, is evocative of our own indulgence and of our desire to collect commodities at the expense of the beauty in rarity. At the same time, the pearl/oyster, a natural product of our oceans, is a representation of the sea. Depicted in such numbers, the pearl, here, also stands as an example of the reaping, the depletion and ultimate destruction of its delicate balance…”

– excerpt from hole/whole – exhibition essay by Carrie Phillips-Kieser

“…In searching for what underlies the visible, Jeanette Johns’ series of prints Retreating Agassiz, reveal how the unknown and unseen can give context and meaning to ones sense and experience of place. Taking the widest macro-view in both a physical framework and through the concept of time, Johns traverses millennia, and discovers ways to insert something of herself into a collective history of place that she asserts belongs to “all of us.” It is a collective history of a time that would not be named or marked until the recent past; nonetheless, it is an inherited history whose relics and traces remain to impact the lives of those who take care to notice…”

– excerpt from Retreating Agassiz – exhibition essay by Romy Straathof

The echoes of this print portfolio have reverberated beyond the Netherlands. A year ago, Alberta Printmakers Society approached the Grafisch Atelier Alkmaar with a proposal to organize a print-exchange. The Alkmaar printmakers agreed enthusiastically and they open the exchange with the exhibition of their anniversary portfolio, Echo, in Calgary. They have kindly donated this portfolio, which now becomes part of the Alberta Printmakers Society’s archive. A juried selection of prints from Alberta Printmakers Society’s members will will be exhibited in Alkmaar in January 2009.

“Although each work from these four artists provides a different issue in human values in an unstable environment, one certainty is that none of these concerns will rest on a fixed point in the journey of human development, since each quality of human value attaches to social-cultural symbolic significance. As members of a society, we can’t help but hold on to each duality of human characteristics in a unique division to provide security and comfort. Each shifting point in this human development transgresses through time and place, and the concerns in these art works reflect unsettled distinctions between order and chaos by presenting material and value continuity between these states of human transgression…”

– excerpt from exhibition essay by Kim Huynh