A Graphic Muse

The catalogue of an exhibition at Mount Holyoke College, this volume documents the vital and original contributions that American women artists have brought to contemporary printmaking. The neon bars and menacing stairwells of Jane Dickson's aquatints convey the loneliness of big-city living as powerfully as Edward Hopper's urban landscapes. They contrast with Yvonne Jacquette's stunning, meticulous nighttime vistas of Manhattan. Many of the artists here employ innovative techniques. For example, Nancy Graves combines etching, pastel, aquatint and drypoint in a single layered print, so the colors become autonomous, whirling-dervish gestures. Helen Frankenthaler transforms traditional Japanese woodcut into a painterly medium. Louisa Chase's symbolic landscapes of torsos, hands and feet could not be less similar to Susan Shatter's soaring perspectives of the rocky Maine coast, yet both attest to the viability of the print medium. (December 22)