SPHERE

Thanks from Knoxville

We hope you enjoyed your time during SPHERE, the 2015 SGC International Conference in Knoxville. It was a tremendous honor to host this wonderful gathering of printmakers, to celebrate people who have made a difference in our profession, to see some amazing work, to talk about why we make it and to reaffirm our many professional and personal connections.

We are very thankful for the support we received from The University of Tennessee, The Ewing Gallery, the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, Friends of the UT Printmaking Program, French Paper Company, Legion Paper Company, and our many partners including the Knoxville Museum of Art, Printeresting.org, The Emporium Art Center, the Pilot Light, the Marek M. Pienkowski Foundation and the City of Knoxville.

We greatly appreciate having had R.B. Morris as the Sphere Conference Poet Laureate. His readings during the conference served to remind us to consider the relationship between the mockingbird and the artist. We encourage future conference hosts to continue this tradition of designating a conference poet laureate.

We are especially grateful to our wonderful key-note speakers as well as the people who organized exchange portfolios, chaired panel and INKubator sessions, and presented technical demonstrations. These are the folks who prepared the feast that nourished us.

The conference web site (web.utk.edu/~sphere) will remain in place as an archive. It includes a Useful PDFs page where you can find handouts from technical demonstrations, the roster of attendees, and other resources.

More than 2,400 photos from the conference are posted on Instagram at:

https://instagram.com/explore/tags/sgci2015/

Over 1,600 people attended the SGC International Conference March 18-21, 2015. Data generated by the UT Conference Center indicates that people from 12 counties outside of the United States attended, including Argentina (1), Australia (1), Belgium (1), Canada (56), Italy (1), Japan (3), Mexico (2), Poland (7), Puerto Rico (2), Qatar (2), United Arab Emirates (1), and the United Kingdom (2). For the US, every state was represented with the exception of New Hampshire, with the most attendees from Tennessee (99), Ohio (97), New York (92), Georgia (83), Illinois (64), Pennsylvania (50), Indiana (49), North Carolina (48), Virginia (42) and Wisconsin (41).

We look forward to seeing many of you in Portland next March.

Conference Videos

As part of the SGC International Conference Community Television of Knoxville (ctvKnox.org) produced several videos documenting some of the keynote speakers. Many of the videos include introductory readings by poet R.B. Morris. We wish to express special thanks to Jason Amos Oaks for helping to produce these videos. Below is a listing with links on Vimeo:

Opening of the Conference with Red Grooms, recipient of the 2015 SGC International Life Achievement Award https://vimeo.com/125745510

Walter Jule, 2015 SGC International Excellence in Teaching Award

https://vimeo.com/126505930

Ruth Weisberg, 2015 SGC International Printmaker Emeritus Award

https://vimeo.com/126532816

Ruth Weisberg is interviewed by Master Printer Andy Rubin

https://vimeo.com/123652108





Theme

Knoxville’s most distinctive landmark is the Sunsphere, built for the 1982 World’s Fair. As a symbolic representation of three-dimensional space, the sphere references the atom, the cell, the earth, the sky, and the universe. We are part of the biosphere living on the lithosphere of planet Earth, breathing in the atmosphere and, at times, contemplating the celestial sphere. Using the sphere as metaphor, this conference will consider our community, our profession, and our relationships with the world. Since a sphere has no top or bottom, we might regard the sphere as non-hierarchical, with all of the surface points an equal distance from its center.



Building on prior SGC conferences held in Knoxville in 1992 and 1995, the 2015 SGC International Printmaking Conference will include numerous exhibitions, 18 panel sessions, 9 INKubator sessions, more than 15 exchange portfolios, a mentoring program, a diverse product-publishers-program fair, the 2015-2018 SGCI Member Traveling Exhibition, 22 technical demonstrations, a full day of open portfolio sessions, and some unique special projects.