Artists & Communities Host Site: Plains Art Museum
704 First Avenue North
Fargo, ND 58108
Web site: www.plainsart.org/

Millennium Artist:
Richard Mock
Printmaker
New York
E-mail: RichardBMock@aol.com
Web site: www.biddingtons.com/content/creativemock.html

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Artists & Communities Millennium Artist Richard Mock partnered with the Plains Art Museum and Fargo community on a printmaking project.

During his four-month residency, Mock taught four youth and two adult printmaking classes, as well as conducted studio open houses and community discussions. Mock, an internationally syndicated cartoonist who uses linoleum cut printmaking to create his editorial cartoons, offered his own work as a teaching example. In Mock's classes, students as young as ten learned how to make and print a linocut and about the history of block printing and social commentary through editorial cartoons.

One of Mock's main goals for the project was to help students gain political awareness by expressing themselves through the medium of printmaking. He encouraged students to reflect on local, national, and global issues, and to develop linocuts that addressed issues of importance to them. Cartoon themes included flooding in the Fargo area, pollution, and greed. One of the adult classes focused on capital punishment in the U.S.

An exhibit, "Hardlines," was featured at the Museum from August 26 - October 1, 2000 and included one print from each of the 86 participants in the classes and 10 other artists who worked with Mock during the residency. In conjunction with the exhibit, the artworks are featured in a publication also titled Hardlines, which is available for purchase through the Museum and at select bookstores nation-wide.

In her forward for Hardlines, Claudia M. Pratt, Education Director for the Plains Art Museum, writes, "our community was fortunate to host Richard Mock as a guest artist. Not only is he an artist, he is a dynamic educator who skillfully nurtured participants to think deeply about the world around them and to illustrate their thoughts through the technique of linocut printmaking. He brought out the best in the youth and adults that worked with him."

Mock describes the students' linocuts as "life's poetry of the highest order."

MILLENNIUM ARTIST BIO

Richard Mock is a printmaker, painter, sculptor, and syndicated cartoonist whose work is featured in the collections of the Alliance Capital Management Corporation, various U.S. embassies, the Bank of America Corporation, International Museum of Cartoon Art, Museum of Modern Art, Prudential Insurance, Roswell Art Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, and Museo de Monterrey, Mexico.