Exhibition encourages visitors to leave their own mark

“Call your mother.”

“Lose some weight.” “While You Were Out”

R.L. Tillman

Future Tenant Art Space

Now through July 15

819 Penn Avenue

412-325-7037

“Call your mother.”

“Lose some weight.”

These one-phrase reminders stick out, partially because almost everyone writes them frequently. One artist also made them a medium for his exhibit on everyday life: its ups, downs and banalities.

R.L. Tillman, a printmaker from Baltimore and founder of the blog Printeresting.org, will show his new exhibition, “While You Were Out,” now through July 15 at Future Tenant Art Space in Downtown.

Consisting of three separate pieces, the exhibition deviates from standard printmaking. Instead of limiting himself to displaying standard one-dimensional prints, Tillman chose to make his exhibit more interactive, focusing around pieces that viewers can take home or write on.

“My work explores the vapidity of contemporary graphic language, and ‘While You Were Out’ also addresses the emptiness of the way we use language in everyday life. The three pieces in the show each use text, image and immersion to involve the viewer in largely hollow exchanges,” Tillman said.

The artist used boxes, posters, leaflets and fliers to create his pieces. One piece, titled “Aphorisms,” consists of several boxes all printed with messages we might leave to ourselves frequently, such as “Call your mother” or “Lose some weight.” The second piece, “Ditto,” features one framed print, and then hundreds of copies fanned out across the floor for viewers to take with them.

The third piece, located at the front of the gallery, is the exhibition’s namesake — “While You Were Out.” For the piece, Tillman printed up hundreds of copies of a standard “While you were out” form. Visitors of the exhibit can write messages on them and then pin them individually to one of the boards on the opposite wall.

“People can leave their notes, either for [Tillman] or for friends or for whomever they decide to leave a note for,” Katy Peace, co-executive director at Future Tenant, said. “So it’s an exhibition that is constantly changing as it progresses over the course of the month.”

To a certain degree, “While You Were Out” reflects a general trend in the art world. Because of the utilitarian nature of crafts, the art world often did not hold it on the same level as fine arts. But in the past few years, printmaking, traditionally thought of as a “lower,” form of art, has become increasingly popular.

“It’s counter-intuitive. In an increasingly digital culture, you might expect interest in printed art to contract. Instead, it’s growing,” Tillman said.

Printmaking is sometimes regarded as a style of art for the masses. Prints can be copied and duplicated any number of times with copies remaining nearly identical to the original. The same is true in a bigger way in the case of “While You Were Out,” except now the viewers make the reprints. The original image, that of the “While you were out” note fashioned by Tillman, remains the same, but each viewer gets to add her personal input.

“While You Were Out” demonstrates the potential for creativity and interaction, both within the art community and between the artist and spectator. Now a collaboration between the artist and the exhibit’s viewers, the project began as a collaboration between Tillman and students at Artists Image Resource, a local organization that helps artists and students throughout the creative process by bringing them together in what AIR director Robert Beckman refers to as a “dynamic working environment.” Tillman, formerly the artist in residence for Kent State University, came to Pittsburgh through his work with AIR.

“The [Artists Image Resource] studio serves as a broad-based print and imaging resource whose mission is to integrate the creation of fine art printwork with innovative educational programs that explore the creative process,” Beckman said.