Katsunori Hamanishi

(Japan, b. 1949)

Born in Hokkaido, Hamanishi graduated from Tokai University and his work has been exhibited in print competitions in more than 15 countries. He selects his subject matter - ropes, wires or branches - for their unique ability to form a three dimensional plane and to express texture. Hamanishi writes: "First I draw my idea - sketch of three dimensionally composed material elements. This sketching reveals the sculptural quality of the subject not evident in a two dimensional plane. Lately, my interest has has been in seeking a satisfying composition of pictorial elements: vertical, horizontal and/or diagonal lines created by objects."

Hamanishi's mezzotints are in the permanent collections of the Chicago Art Institute, London's British Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.

Kerr Eby

(American, 1889 - 1946)

Harold Kerr Eby was born in Tokyo, Japan where his father was serving as a missionary for the Canadian Methodist Church. At the age of 18, Eby moved to New York to attend the Pratt Institute. He later studied with George Bellows at the Art Students League. A frequent visitor to the Cos Cob artist colony in Connecticut, Eby became friends with the older Childe Hassam. Hassam had previously tried his hand at etching but his plates remained unfinished until he received lessons in etching from Eby.

In 1917, Eby enlisted in the United States Army where he served in a medical unit. He translated his own war experiences into drawings and prints depicting the horrors of war. He was a member of the Century Club and the National Academy of Design. Upon his death, Eby's prints were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Larry Welo

(American, b. 1951)

Larry Welo has been creating etchings since the early 1970's. A graduate of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, Welo operated a studio in Minneapolis until moving to Wisconsin, where he currently lives with his family.

A popular Midwestern artist, Larry Welo's etchings cover a broad range of topics. Scenes from small Midwestern towns, spirited cats, images of baseball diamonds or bicyclists, colorful zany portraits titled An Appetite for Art -- all of these subjects are fertile territory for Welo's wit and skill as a printmaker. When viewing his work, always notice the title; his witty perceptions about the world set him apart from many other artists. Welo executes his work in both black and white and in color, with the occasional addition of monoprint or chine colle.

His prints on baseball themes are included in the Sports Art Archives at the Butler Institute of Art and in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as well as corporate, private and university collections in the Midwest. His works have also been featured on several covers of the North American Review.

Mabel Dwight

(American, 1876-1955)

Dwight was a social satirist who did not discover lithography until after her 50th birthday. Her interest has always been in drawing the characters that inhabit the great cities.

Her work is in the Metropolitan Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Marion Greenwood

Martha Mayer Erlebacher

(American, born 1937)

Erlebacher is renowned for her extensive background in anatomy, historical painting techniques and the literature of realist painting. She earned her Master of Fine Arts from Pratt institute and she teaches on the faculty of the New York Academy Graduate School of Figurative Art. The figure, nude or simply draped, is her primary subject. In the catalog notes of a recent exhibition at the Arnot Art Museum, It was written that "at its most base level, it is the drawing of 'form' that Erlebacher revels in. Like a sculptor or an architect, the foundation of her art is in an understanding of volume, how it functions in space, and how subtle changes in the nuances of light and color add new dimensions to it."

The artist has had more than twenty one-person exhibitions, and she has been collected nationally and abroad, including the Yale university Art gallery, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. She is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards including, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant, a Mellon Venture Fund Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Senior Fellowship and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship.

Martin Lewis

(American, 1881-1962)

Lewis was born in Australia and briefly studied art in Sydney's Julian Ashton School. Otherwise, he was mostly self-taught having been obsessed with drawing from an early age. In 1900 Lewis left his native land for America and eventually settled in New York which was to become his home and major source of artistic inspiration for the rest of his life. It was 1915 before Lewis created his first print which was so successful that Edward Hopper asked Lewis to teach him etching. Lewis "worked occasionally in mezzotint and aquatint, intaglio techniques that render tones more easily than drypoint, but he preferred the crisp high contrast linearity of drypoint for his studies of light and movement.... One reason for Lewis's creativity with drypoint was his imaginative use of the burnisher. His early work with mezzotint gave him a sense of its possibilities, and he often drew with the burnisher the way he drew with the needle." Only seven of his more than 140 prints were created exclusively in the mezzotint medium, one of which is a self portrait.

Maurice Pasternak

(Belgian, b. 1946)

Pasternak was born in Brussels and pursued the study of art from 1963 through 1968 at ENSAV, Belgium's national academy for the training of students with superior artistic ability. Since graduation, he has engaged in the creation of drawings, pastels and mezzotints. In addition, he served from 1982 until recently as the chief professor of art and the designer of the art curriculum at his alma mater. Since 1971, Pasternak's work has been awarded more than twenty international prizes at biennial competitions throughout Europe, Asia and the United States including the Prix Special De L'Edition at World Print Four in San Francisco and the Walker Prize at the Philadelphia Print Club. He has had numerous solo exhibitions on various continents and his work is included in museums in Japan, Taiwan, Belgium, Poland and the United States. In 1994, Pasternak had a solo exhibition of his work at the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Mons in Belgium and was selected for inclusion in "Intergrafia '94, - World Award Winners Gallery" in Katowice, Poland. Pasternak was a guiding force in the 1994 Belgium-Japan Print Exchange Exhibition.

Mikio Watanabe

(Japanese, born 1954)

Born in Yokohama in 1954, Watanabe graduated from Ecole des Beaux Arts in Tokyo in 1977 and then moved to Paris. Two years later, he was honored by admission to Atelier 17 in Paris and by 1983 had mastered the mezzotint process. Watanabe has created over 90 mezzotints in the past 13 years, each velvety black creation featuring his model and wife, Yuriko.

Of his art Watanabe has written: "It is essential that I vigorously train myself, perpetually purifying and polishing my character. My works are an effort to capture with sincerity the beauty that is manifest in nature. The moment when the copper plate, the technique, the tools and myself become one harmonious whole is when the best of each element is brought out."

Morris Henry Hobbs

(American, 1892-1947)

Born in Rockford, Illinois, Hobbs studied at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1936, he was invited to exhibit a solo show at the Smithsonian Institution.

He invented a miniature etching press and many etching tools. He served as Director of the Chicago Society of Etchers. After going to New Orleans to exhibit at the Arts and Crafts Club, Hobbs relocated to that city. He is best known for his nudes and for the architectural etchings and drypoints of his adopted city.