Mike McMullen | Close Crush Exhibition

For Tappan’s first duo exhibition, Close Crush, married artists Mike McMullen and Cheryl Humphreys, both printmakers, exhibited artworks made in their first year of parenthood. Several of the series are linked through material, concept, or practice. The artists share a studio, but after the birth of their son, are rarely in the space together. Instead, each artist worked in the studio only when the other was away – but this separateness made each aware of the in-process artwork left behind by their partner. Many of the artworks in Close Crush were inspired by viewing traces of another artist's work left behind for the day. Tappan was excited to be able to realize an exhibition that showed individual practices while recognizing how both artists inspired each other through concept and material. The exhibition title plays on both the artists’ relationship and the printmaking term “close crush”, which refers to the moment when an inked plate meets paper under pressure to create a print.

In his series Cosmic Distances, McMullen places two images side-by-side–a galaxy beside a bush of roses; and an eclipse paired with a sunflower. Using a photo intaglio method, he scales the infinite expanse precisely to a bouquet at hand. The source imagery comes from mid-20th-century amateur photography magazines, where the early DIY space photography community would share techniques. Juxtaposing the cosmic and the earthly, the vast and the human scale, McMullen explores the universal human quest to understand nature and the unknown. For this series, McMullen made his own plates – instead of sending them out to be made. While modern printing techniques use artificial light to expose the printing plates, McMullen used the more materialist method of exposing them to sunlight – further linking these works to cosmic and earthly cycles. McMullen’s exploration of this imagery began while he was grappling with two powerful human experiences that happened almost concurrently – the grief of losing his father and the profound love for his newborn son Cyan – born shortly after his father’s death. This contrast between beginnings and endings, the weight of patrescence plus the artist’s reckoning with how these events felt cosmically linked, ripples through the work.

Plates used to make McMullen's Cosmic Distances series.

McMullen used sunlight to expose the plates used to make his Cosmic Distances series.

Cosmic Distances on view in Close Crush.

Detail from Cosmic Distances (Diptych I).

Screenprinting is a core part of McMullen’s practice. The works Heaven By the Beach and Floating in an Ocean also grew out of his experience surrounding the death of his father and the almost concurrent birth of his son. These two works were printed on a rare variant of paper (that may no longer be in production) given to McMullen by a friend. McMullen uses the rareness of the paper and the subject matter (also vintage DIY space photography) to consider cosmic timescales within the lens of human experience. The screenprint (also called serigraph) KISS, KISS, is another exploration of using found vintage magazine photography to explore these concepts.

Floating in an Ocean and Heaven by the Beach on view in Close Crush.

KISS,KISS on view in Close Crush.

McMullen was inspired to create his series Flowers From Memory after seeing Humphreys' work Romantic Gestures, where she used printmaking to turn the ephemera of domestic labor and caregiving into floral-inspired images. To make Flowers From Memory, McMullen used Paintstiks, a familiar medium he used often in the past in making street art. With the Paintstiks, he drew directly on printing plates to make 7 drawings of flowers, not drawn from life, but from his memory.

Painstiks used to draw the flowers in Flowers from Memory.

Humphreys' Romantic Gestures series of monotypes

McMullen's Flowers from Memory series of monotypes, created after seeing Humprheys' work.

Flowers from Memory in McMullen & Humphreys' Studio.

McMullen works almost exclusively in black ink; however, his Uh Oh series takes a turn from this practice and explores color. Seeing Humphreys' leftover inks and pigments, used to make her Romantic Gestures series, McMullen decided to experiment with color and with how he was laying marks down. McMullen used Humphreys' colors along with black ink to make the three works in his Uh Oh series. Notably, the two series in conversation with Romantic Gestures are also the two series where McMullen explores more ranges of colors.

Finished monotype from the Romantic Gestures series, by Humphreys.

Monotype from McMullen's Uh Oh series, using Humphreys' leftover pigments.

For McMullen’s Sweet Dreams and Humphreys' Pillow Talk, each artist screen printed on (new) bedsheets to capture the magic of intimate moments in bed after a day of work and caregiving. For Pillow Talk, the colors of the prints all fade into the color cyan – Cyan is the name of their son.

McMullen's Sweet Dreams (top) and Humphreys Pillow Talk (below)

The sunflower forms a repeating motif through several of McMullen’s Close Crush works. Across the series, he explored how transferring a print between different mediums (photograph to laser-engraved stamp to silkscreen) imbues the original image with the visual residue of translating. This process links the history of photography back to more historic forms of printmaking and reminds the viewer that every physical photograph is also a print.

Days After builds a calendar out of a laser cut stamp made from a photograph of a sunflower.

The Sweet Dreams series expands the same image, pulling it out of the calendar and on to a pillowcase.

McMullen & Humphreys' Studio.

McMullen & Humphreys' Studio.

Humphreys & McMullen holding works from the Close Crush exhibition.

Click here to read about Humprheys' artwork.