BIOGRAPHIES & REVIEWS ABOUT MILLY & HER WORK

Myril Adler - Illuminated Embossment

In this presentation of new work on exhibit from November 23 to December 12, Myril Adler has returned to her first love, drawing, and combined it with printmaking to produce a unique vocabulary she defines as "Illuminated Embossment."

Writing about Ms. Adler's continuing interest in archetypal imagery, art consultant Pat Sands says:

Myril Adler is best known as a superb graphic artist. It is more accurate to say she is a superb artist who utilizes printmaking and painting techniques in her continuing effort towards greater intensity of color and depth of form.

....At a time when color covers ever larger areas of the painter's field, Myril Adler's rectitude appears bold. Her small, spare strokes convey a sensation of expanding, pulsing color...Edges assume an almost fluorescent quality against a flat, smooth ground.

Or, the image may be unrelieved by line or tone, defined solely by the cast shadow of the relief...

....The clear, contained shapes that have always characterized Myri; Adler's work are less abstract than in the past. These are archetypal forms, varied in origin, universal in recognition: the Cycladic figures, the Tantric emblem. The "Babushka" comes from childhood memory of the hollow wooden dolls within dolls. Perspective lines that crisscross the page reinforce the concept of infinity implicit in the succession of figures. Jonah, securely enclosed in the great curves of the whale adds a whimsical note to the series.

With a sure eye and a spareness born of an absolute command of her technique, Myril Adler has given us a beautiful and evocative exhibition.

Myril Adler has had previous solo exhibitions in New York at the Westbroadway Gallery and Royal Athena II; at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers; at Gallerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris. In Addition, she has participated in innumerable group and travelling exhibitions both in the United States and abroad. Her work is in public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, Caracas, Venezuela; the University of California at Berkley; the Hudson River Museum; and the University of Rhode Island.

- (Year?) Pat Sands

"The importance of a work of art is measured by the problems the artist sets for herself and the language through which she articulates it's solution by means of rhythms working through her own sensibilities. In her work Myril Adler has summoned our affinity to the universe in a single OM shape evocative of our basic feelings, coexisting with the tensions and sensibilities of our times. Her centeredness serves as an archetype of evolution that she carries through and through, from the spiritual "why" to the technical "how".

In her work Myril Adler seems to be in complete communication with her materials and has no difficulty in making them re-act in her favor. She draws her imagery from a wide variety of elements and fragments recycledfrom other media - an art grafted on another art - and unified in the process."

- April , 1973 Michael Ponce de Leon

"Myril Adler is among the most imaginative graphic artists of today. The materials of her art are highly contemporary - acrylics, Cellotex, insulation board, latex and newly developed printing substances. These combine with a multitude of found objects (all of which had use in the past) to form collage like compositions which seem to embrace something of the mysteries of the future as their theme. Thus, yesterday, now and tomorrow fuse strength and yet sensitivity, and always with highly fascinating and intriguing results."

- May, 1972 Alex Mogelon // From catalog to exhibit at Hudson River Museum, Trevor Mansion

"Myril Adler is one of those rare printmakers and artists able to make a big, bold statement and to project her works on a large scale ... A strong, sure sense of structuring is what gives tension and strength to these works. Texture continues to be a primary concern ... Hard and soft edges oppose one another; hot, bright acrylic colors are played against the deeper, richer tones of printed color. Space is multiplied by shapes and reused in new combinations. References to nature abound. One discovers the textures of walls, of stones, of the earth, of planetary surfaces in these works ...."

- December, 1967 Noel Frackman // Excerpts from the Patent Trader reviewing exhibit at Chappaqua Library

COLLAGE, MONTAGE, ASSEMBLAGE

History and Contemporary Techniques

Norman Laliberte - Alex Mogelon

4. Demonstrations

Collage and assemblage techniques are used with a high degree of imagination and skill by Myril Adler to create multicolored prints of great strength and sensitivity.

Mrs. Adler, whose watercolors, oils, and prints have been exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe, uses the collage concept in work that takes two different directions. Her prints are composed of segments and pieces of metal, wire, cardboard, screening and other low-relief objects, both found and manufactured, which are inked and run through an etching press to produce a print. This section will demonstrate the techniques she employs in creating her prints.

Once a print has been completed, Mrs. Adler will tear up or cut out of it certain graphic elements which become central themes in the creation of entirely new and individual works of art involving a multitude of materials including oil, acrylics, watercolor, Cellotex, insulation board, latex, and almost any useful material that comes to hand. In effect she creates (through the print medium)

her own "found" objects that serve to stimulate and inspire the creation of entirely new compositions that have a mysterious and unique quality about them.

"My collages grow from different roots," Myril Adler says, "a personal vocabulary of texture and forms through the imprinting of rag papers with intaglio etching."

"I am stimulated by the brilliance of oil-based printers inks which become fused with the paper through the great pressure of the etching press, and the endless variables of textured surface."

"In searching for an archetypal imagery I have evolved certain shapes, color combinations, and surfaces in which fragments taunt and intrigue me with their own possibilities. Torn, cut, painted on flat raised or carded surfaces, and endless variety of statements develop. In combination with dyes, inks, acrylic or oil paints the widest range of color hue and intensity becomes possible, from the pristine quality of the untreated paper to the deepest pool of multi-printed dark."

This chapter demonstrates some of Myril Adler's basic collage techniques in creating multi-color prints.

Though the print-making techniques outlined are important, what is significant to the student of collage, montage and assemblage is Mrs. Adler's creative use of self-made shapes and found objects and materials to produce prints that are imaginative compositions within themselves. At the same time, graphic elements within these prints are of such strength and stature that they can be torn or ripped from their original environment and used as "found" objects in the creation of new compositions.

(Need to photograph the illustrative examples of in Myril's studio)

(Accompanying images coming soon)

Some of the tools used in printmaking include rollers of varying size, hand drills, wire and metal instruments
More working tools...brushes of different bristle quality, metal cutouts, shapes and forms, pins and nails.
The principal background of the composition is an intaglio zinc or copper plate that has been distressed and pockmarked by acid and with various power tools. Ink is being applied below the original level to cover the various surfaces and characteristics of the individual crevices and holes.
The excess ink - or ink that has remained on the flat plate surface - is cleaned off with a cloth.
Many varieties of inks are used in a multitude of colors.
The ink is rolled back and forth on a paper before application to the plate in order to regulate its density and to assure that it will spread evenly.
The ink is applied to the surface of the plate. The holes and crevices (page 50) were inked in a different color.
The form or shape - cut from a sheet of lithography plating - is inked separately in its own color.
The wire - a found object in this case - is inked
The two inked elements are positioned on the background intaglio plate.
The entire composition is now placed on the etching press.
A sheet of paper is placed over the composition. Experiments should be made with papers of different textures, qualities and colors to produce prints that vary and have individual characteristics.
A blanket is placed over the paper before rolling the composition through the press.
Printing the composition. (The completed work appears in page 50). The gauge of metal from which the figure was cut and the thickness of the wire (in addition to their individual color) leave an effective impression on the print, delineating and emphasizing elements within the composition; this could not be achieved if all the elements were done on a single surface plate. On the intaglio etching portion of the composition, the pressure of the press has fused the ink from the various surfaces with the paper to form an infinite variety of textures and rich, intense coloration.

(Accompanying image coming soon)

A collection of hinges, lock and key hardware, metal and craft objects - some manufactured, others found - all of which can be used in collages for low-relief printmaking.

(Accompanying image coming soon)

2 and 3. Selections of flat found and manufactured metal objects can be arranged in collage compositions and printed in one or more colors. As stated previously, papers of varying textures, weights, and colors should be tried out in making prints of this kind. Both hardware stores and junk shops contain a world of objects from which a variety of colorful, low-relief collage prints can be created.

(Accompanying images coming soon)

1. Papolota. A collage print by Myril Adler.

The isolated elements used in that composition. The background tablet emerges from distressed zinc plate which is treated in the intaglio technique. The hands and orb were cut from lithographic zinc sheeting. Because each element is a separate entity, the artist has a great deal of flexibility in creating the composition and is assured of remarkable color clarity. These elements can be interchanged, resulting in endless variety.

(Accompanying Images coming soon)

Photographed on this page are various elements which Myril Adler has found or created to produce her collage technique color prints. Some of the basic background sheets are power-tool and acid distressed to be printed in the intaglio method. The shapes and forms were generally cut or fashioned from lithographic plate sheeting, and thus they have their own unique printing qualities. As mentioned, there is great flexibility or variety of choice, simply because the elements are individual and therefore interchangeable. The prints produced in this manner are imaginative works of art themselves. Some of the graphic elements serve to act as "found" objects and, when torn or cut from the prints work, are the catalysts and principal motifs in new works of art in still another medium.

HONORING VETERAN ARTIST MYRIL ADLER

Boldly centered, in the cross hairs of a rifle scope
and in a human eye, a peregrine falcon lies frozen in terror
on the edge of extinction. This is the central focus of the
major wall at PRINTMAKING AS CREATIVE PROCESS by Briarcliff's
celebrated artist-teacher Myril Adler. The opening reception
at the Katonah Village Library Gallery will be held on
Saturday, June 4, from 2 to 4 PM. The show ends on June 25th.
Besides jolting our awareness, dismay and appreciation
of wild life, Mrs. Adler presents large, emotionally-
wrenching portraits of street people, whose lives are also
shattered out of their control. These portraits contrast
with intense smaller works generated on the computer, which
seem to appear and recede or fracture as our visual scans pull
out parts and images, then relinquish them to search elsewhere.
Many works embrace transcendence, eternity and universal
symbols gathered from many cultures and religions. These
powerful, simplified images speak to us of empathy, humility
and the search for the best within us. Myril Adler's use of
the human hand, which in examining and manipulating objects
goaded the brain to grow larger; which differentiates human
beings from other life forms; which identifies the uniqueness
of each individual, is simply and beautifully formed and expresses
utter devotion, reception and gratitude.

As the show's title suggests, Mrs. Adler is very involved
with process: technical, artistic and symbolic. Over
close to fourty years she has developed her means of expression
through travel, reading, teaching, study, collecting and
work. Her technical experiments in controlling acid baths
to etch large metal grounds as background design, her
various trials in mixing chemicals to develop opaque and
translucent pigments (and the results obtained in laying
one over another); her design and structure of templates
to express ideas and symbols all combine to produce a body
of work of stunning visual impact. Through techniques such
as embossing, collage, mono prints and woodcuts PRINTMAKING
AS A CREATIVEPROCESS by Myril Adler presents us with a rich
varied and exciting show

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