User:Rdelamater/Gary L. Shaffer

Gary Lee Shaffer
Gary Lee Shaffer was an artist who worked primarily in [printmaking] in an expressionist manner. He was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1936. In 1957, he joined other artists including Agnes Martin and Hans Hoffman(1880–1966) in New York City to participate in its emerging art scene. Motifs in his earlier work include: a reclining figure, embossed stone forms, spheres, targets, the sun and circles.

Shaffer completed two full summer residency scholarships at the Hans Hoffman School of Painting in Provincetown, Ma. He joined the Printmakers’ Workshop, a studio established by master printer Robert Blackburn to revive fine printmaking after World War II. Here, he focused on printmaking and began selling his work and entering his prints in competitions. His creative work spanned over 42 years that embodied late 20th century painting and printmaking movements. Shaffer organized multiple exhibits and showed his work in as many as 10 shows a year.

In 1958, Shaffer began drawing directly on lithographic limestones in relation to the New York abstract expressionists. Beginning in 1960, Shaffer gained recognition through printmaking competitions and international traveling exhibits, winning awards and purchase prizes. In 1967, he experimented with the combination of metal plate lithography with collagraphy, leading to his first publication of multi-plate collographs in 1968. He used interlocking shaped masonite plates that he fabricated with metal, materials and cement paste. He referred these works as gesso relief prints. This transition to a different medium marked a unique stylistic approach, exploring and deconstructing the landscape as an icon.

From 1986 - 2000, he published his prints at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, experimenting with combining different processes and composition. He published etchings in portfolios and bound lithography woodcut collage prints into individually unique, hand-made books. Grids, dot patterns, and other symbols recur throughout. Shaffer's compositions are often evocative of a landscape. Shaffer's paintings are a link between his expressionist roots and the urban minimalist movement of the 1960s. His early oil portraits and figures led to work with non-objective gestures of abstract expressionism, and finally to his deconstructed landscapes. Shaffer's print editions were very small with only 2 to 18 impressions. He was an active board member of the California Society of Printmakers and the Society of American Graphic Artists. For decades, he wrote articles for their publications and assisted with local, national and international exchange exhibitions.

Shaffer painted in his San Francisco garden shed studio until 1993 when his health declined from emphysema. He lived with his dog Blanche in a flat that served as a private museum of his work. Shaffer died at his home in 2001.

In the Permanent Collections of

 * The Newark Public Library Print Collection
 * Portland Art Museum, Oregon
 * DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Mass.
 * Montclair Museum of Art, NJ
 * The Print Collection of the New York Public Library
 * Guild Hall of East Hampton, NY
 * Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum, Alaska
 * The Museum of Art of the University of Oklahoma
 * Arnot Art Museum of Elmira, NY
 * Detroit Institute of Arts Print Collection
 * Art Institute of Chicago Print Collection

Awards

 * Pacific Prints 1998: "The Museum West Purchase Award" Janet Turner National Print Competition 1997: "Joseph Kaveney Memorial Cash Award"
 * SAGA 66th National Print Exhibition 1997: "Una E. Johnson Graphics Award"
 * 8th National Exhibition of Berkeley Art Center (Works on Paper)1992, 2nd Prize"
 * Awarded six month Fellowship, Kala Institute, 1991
 * Awarded Fellowship in Papermaking, OXBOW, Michigan, 1984
 * SAGA 58th National Print Exhibition 1980: "John B. Turner Memorial Award"
 * Boston Printmakers 32nd Nat'l Exhibit 1980: "DeCordova Museum Purchase Award"
 * SAGA 56th National Print Exhibition 1978: "The Vera List Purchase Award" for an edition of 18 prints, 10 of which will be donated to 10 different Museums"
 * First Hawaii National Print Exhibition 197l: Purchase Award
 * 10th Annual Calgary Graphics Exhibition 1970: Purchase Award
 * Potsdam Prints 1969: Purchase Award
 * Wooster Community Art Center 1968: Purchase Award

Selected Exhibitions
1950's: EXHIBITION MOMENTUM, Chicago, (Jurors: Franz Kline, Phillip Guston, and Sam Hunter)
 * Hyde Park Art Center, and 41gallery, Chicago, Ill., 1958 (Invitational)

1960's:
 * Brooklyn Museum 13th National Print Biennial, Brooklyn, NY
 * SAGA 48th National Print Exhibition, Associated American Artistgallery, NYC
 * Master of Arts Thesis Exhibition, Kresge Argallery, Michigan State University
 * Seventh Silvermine National Print Exhibition, New Canaan, CT
 * Brooklyn Museum 15th National Print Biennial, Brooklyn, NY
 * 40th Northwest Printmakers' International Exhibition, Seattle Art Museum and the Portland Art Museum
 * 21st National Print Exhibition, Library of Congress, Washington DC, circulated nationally by the Smithsonian Institution 1969 - 1972]

1970's:
 * 10TH Annual Calgary Graphics Exhibition, Alberta College of Art; circulated by the Canada Council throughout Canada for one year
 * IV Biennial Americana de Grabado, Museo Nacional de Grabado, Museo Nascional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile
 * First Hawaii National Print Exhibition, Honolulu Acadamy of Fine Arts, Honolulu, HI
 * Seattle Print International, 1971, 42nd International Exhibition of the Northwest Printmakers, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
 * American and Japanese Printmakers, Frankfurt, Germany & Thessaloniki, Greece, sponsored by the "International Print Society"
 * International Contemporary Graphics Exhibition, Taiwan

1980's:
 * Boston Printmakers 32nd National Print Exhibition, DE
 * Architecture in Contemporary Prints, (Invitational) Pratt Manhattagallery, NY 1983
 * 1st International Print Competition, Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, Republic of China
 * Solo Exhibition of Recent Work, Lancaster, PA
 * A Tribute to Isobel Mac Kinnon, The Art institute of Chicago, (Invitational)
 * PAPER, Invitational exhibition held at RPM Studio, NYC

1990's:
 * Published Prints, The Louisville Visual Arts Association, Louisville, KY (Invitational)
 * Berkeley Art Center 8th National Exhibition, Works on Paper (Second Prize)
 * Kala Institute Fellowship and Exhibition, (6 month artist-in-residence fellowship)
 * Matrix #1 - Monotypes/Monoprints, SOMAgallery Space, San Francisco
 * Diversity and Vision of the Printed Image, California Society of Printmakers Membership Exhibition, Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA
 * Sightlines: International Printmaking Symposium and Exhibition (SNAP), University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. (Invitational) October 1997
 * 85th Anniversary Exhibition of the California Society of Printmakers, 51 gallery, San Francisco
 * Tradition and Transition in The 1990's, Calif. Soc. of Printmakers' Annual SOMARTgallery and Cultural Center, San Francisco

2000-current:
 * Radical Printmaking: Innovations From the California Society of Printmakers, San Francisco Arts Commission
 * Solo Memorial Exhibit of Prints & Paintings, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA
 * Solo Commemorative Print Exhibit, San Francisco Arts Commission, City Hall Venue, San Francisco
 * Prints and Paintings of Gary Shaffer, Linda Penzugallery, San Anselmo, CA
 * Gary Shaffer Prints and Paintings, Octavia’s Hazgallery, San Francisco