Eleanor Rubin: An Artist's Impressions

My Press has a new life at Pine Manor

http://www.pmc.edu/Eleanor-Rubin
Press moved from West Newton to Pine Manor 2016 and now is being used by students. The link  above will take you to an article about this big transition.

Mapping music: One print in a new series of monotypes 2018

Studio in Winter

This poster is currently on view at the Arnold Arboretum's exhibit "Artists in the Arboretum" For more information see: http://japansocietyboston.org/event-2044173

Look Again: Boston Printmakers Exhibit

Boston Printmakers Member Exhibit opens  May 2015 at the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury.  The woodcut print seen here will be included.  Details to follow

Boston Printmaker's Biennial includes Eleanor Rubin's print: Gingko Blue

Boston Printmakers exhibit 

The link above will take you to a review of the Boston Printmaker's exhibit which includes this print: Gingko Blue, (sumi ink on slate 2012)

Joseph (Levi) Leonard Reading Braille and Playing Piano

Images that inspire my current art projects

Memories in Stone

Memories in Stone: Fissures: Four prints: 2012 Sumi ink on Slate, each 20" x 16", 2012

Congruence: Materials and Subject Matter

Time-worn roof slate is the material I chose to support images about memory, memory loss and imagination in a 2012 series of prints. Examples from this series are included in my 2013 exhibit,  Progress of the Eclipse. Progress of the Eclipse These chipped and scuffed stone pieces represents the evolution of work which began with woodcuts in the 1990s.  Use of weathered roof slates for this series arose out of an impulse similar to my use of braille printing plates to create an another work, Blind: Seeking Shelter, 1937.  I was drawn in both cases to materials, (distressed slate in one instance and  braille printing plates in the other), which became integral to a complex exploration of imagery and ideas. My work on the themes of immigration and disability continues. I plan to integrate fragments of music manuscripts, braille text and immigration documents into a new series of woodcut prints.

Summer Nights: Woodcut in the Collection of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This woodcut, Summer Nights, is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is an image of light which compliments and contradicts the woodcut images in my current exhibition Progress of the Eclipse: Memory, Memory Loss and Imagination on view at the Open Door Gallery, 89 South Street, Boston MA until April 12, 2013.

Exhibit Website for Progress of the Eclipse

Open Door Gallery has created a web page with a dozen images and related text for my exhibit: Progress of the Eclipse: Memory, Memory Loss and Imagination. If you are at a distance and can't come to this Boston exhibit which opens January 14, 2013 and closes April 12, 2013, the web page is an excellent overview. If you are near by, I'd love to welcome you at the reception January 17th reception 4-7 at 89 South Street, Boston, MA.

The exhibit itself includes 32 images and represents work from the 1990s to 2012.

Blind: Seeking Refuge, 1937 (artists' book acquired 2012 by Boston Athenaeum)

BLIND: SEEKING REFUGE, 1937, Braille printing plate, immigration document, handmade paper (2002)  Acquired by the Boston Athenaeum July 2012 for its collection of artists' books.

Artwork of mine that has a relationship to blindness was just acquired by the Boston Athenaeum.  The particular artwork is a one-of-a-kind artists' book about my uncle's immigration to America in 1937 Boston Athenaeum's Rare book Collection.   It was extremely unusual for a man who was blind to be admitted to the USA at that time.  Joseph Levi (b. 1903) had an active life as a concertizing pianist in Mannheim Germany and, after immigration to the USA,  his life as a pianist and composer continued in Los Angeles until his death in 1979. 

What might catch your attention particularly in the artwork above, (Blind: Seeking Refuge 1937) is that the structure of the book is made from a braille printing plate.  In this instance, what you see is a plate that was given to me on a visit to National Braille Press. These zinc plates would ordinarily have been recycled, (smoothed out and then embossed again with braille and used again to print magazines).    When I asked for and received a couple of these plates, I had no clear idea what I might do with them.  They interested me as a printmaker.  It was at a workshop c. 2002 about making paper and creating artists' books that I made the "book" that you see above