April Vollmer is a New York artist, author, and educator who focuses on mokuhanga, Japanese woodcut printmaking. She also makes drawings, collages, books and digital prints. Her work has been published in journals including Science, Printmaking Today and Contemporary Impressions and her book: Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop was released by Watson-Guptill in 2015.
Brief Biography
April Vollmer (b. 1951, Corning, NY) earned an MFA from Hunter College in 1983. Active as an artist and curator at lower east side nonprofit spaces including Henry Street Settlement Abrons Arts Center, Gallery Onetwentyeight, and Ceres during the 1980s and 1990s, she first exhibited her woodcuts at AIR gallery in 1998. Later solo shows include Westchester Gallery (Peekskill, NY), Square One Gallery (New York, NY), The Phillips Museum of Art, (Lancaster, PA), Fairleigh Dickinson University Gallery (Teaneck, NJ), Silicon Gallery Fine Art Prints (Philadelphia, PA), Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Alexander/Heath Contemporary (Roanoke, VA), Akademija FLU Centre (Belgrade, Serbia) and CfSHE Gallery (Tokyo, Japan). She has taught mokuhanga in Serbia, Spain and across the US and lectured at many universities about contemporary creative mokuhanga. She is an active member of the Advisory Board of the triennial International Mokuhanga Conference, Tokyo. An Advisory Board member of Kentler International Drawing Space, Red Hook, NY, she has participated in many exhibitions there and her work is in the Kentler Flatfiles. Her prints have been show at the Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum Store. Her writing and artwork have been published in journals including Science, Printmaking Today and Contemporary Impressions. Her book on the history and contemporary use of mokuhanga, Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop was released by Watson-Guptill in 2015.
Artist Statement
Everything I make is part of an autobiographical story woven from the patterns and contradictions I find in art history and architecture, nature and science. I make drawings, artist books, photographs and digital prints, with a special focus on woodcut. The methodical steps of printmaking, its technical and scientific character, its repetitions, give my literal mind a way to understand what I see more deeply and to make it my own. I use the processes of printmaking to generate images that I print myself in small editions. I often layer and reprint blocks in different orientations to create larger, more complex compositions. With its refined cutting and printing tools and resilient handmade paper, mokuhanga has given me a way to make my images at once more controlled and more immediate, more tactile. My woodcuts are about the way attention and physical touch give substance to the immaterial.
GALLERY AFFILIATIONS
Kentler Flat Files, Kentler International Drawing Space, Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY
The Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum Store, New York, NY
Central Booking Gallery, NY and traveling exhibitions
April Vollmer Japanese Wood Block on Vimeo video by Dempsey Rice.