Exchange #16

Sharen Linder, Coordinator

• Medium: woodblock print (hand rubbed or pulled on a press, B&W or color, any pigments, any paper)
• Theme: none
• Paper: chu-ban about 10 x 7.5 inches (25.5 x 19cm).
• Paper type: no restriction
• Registration period: One month starting January 1, 2003 (or until 30 participants are enrolled)
• Work period: Three months starting February 1 -- no drop-outs allowed after March 31 !!
• Deadline for finished prints: May 1st, 2003

We encompass very experienced printmakers, very new printmakers, and some printmakers who have tried new ideas in this exchange. We are lucky, as printmakers, to be able to share our work from around the world, as few artists can. And as no other artists might, we can take this shared work and learn from one another's efforts, and hold these keepsakes of now treasured friends.

-- Sharen Linder, May, 2003

Here is another [Baren] Exchange - hot off the barens and presses ... 30 interesting woodblock prints ready for your perusal!

The coordinator of this exchange - Ms. Sharen Linder - has already written in her own introduction about how the coordinator's job served to intensify her [Baren] experience, bringing to her mailbox correspondence from members in far-off places, and even resulting in face-to-face meetings with some of them. That sort of thing wasn't the primary motivation for us when we began doing these exchanges - we mostly just wanted to show people our prints! - but as time has gone by, the personal relationships that have developed between [Baren] members may turn out to be one of the most important 'side-effects' of our activities.

Who knows ... perhaps one day I'll be able to announce the birth of a baby resulting from the meeting of two [Baren] members! But until such a time arrives, I'll have to be content with announcing the arrival of these packages of 30 somewhat smaller 'babies'!

I hope you enjoy viewing this collection of our works - I know that their creators certainly enjoyed the 'conception'!

David Bull
Founder, [Baren] Forum
Tokyo, June 2003