“Speaking In & Out” Printmaking Gallery by Ida Short

In 2015 the Hillcrest Academy art gallery exhibited Ida Short’s artwork from her Goshen College senior art show, which primarily included figurative drawings and printmaking.  Since that time she has gone through an eight month internship working with a Letterpress as well as working at the Whiteaker Printmakers in Eugene, Oregon, and at the Tympanum Press in Goshen, Indiana.  Hillcrest Academy’s current art show displays the artwork that resulted from these unique experiences.

From the artist: “Speaking In and Out” is a show that contains two threads of experience twisted together: learning a new craft and hearing women around me over the course of several months.

The first thread, learning a new craft, comes through in most of my pieces shown here. The most obvious example of this is my work with the pangram, which is a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet. The most commonly known pangram is “The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dog,” but there are many more pangrams out there. In working with pangrams I was working with a challenge of design. How do you showcase antique type while going beyond making a simple specimen sheet? How do you communicate to clients what a font looks like and help them see possibilities open to them?

The second thread, hearing stories from women around me, comes through in many of my other pieces.  Through many conversations over the last eight months I created many pieces about everyday experiences of being a woman in the United States in the 21st Century. Themes of these conversations were feeling unheard and ignored, shut out and gaslit. 

Some of these pieces are traditionally letterpress printed, while some are not. Some are technical challenges, while some are process-oriented. The paper weavings on display are made of prints that she made during her apprenticeship, tore up, and then sewed together to make something different. 

Ida Short was born and grew up in Kalona, Iowa.  Her parents are Dick and Jane Yoder-Short. She graduated from Hillcrest Academy in 2011 and then from Goshen College in 2015 with a Studio Art Major and Piano Pedagogy Minor. Ida recently relocated back to Indiana from Oregon where she enjoys experimenting with different non traditional printmaking techniques.

Ida’s work will be on display in the Hillcrest Academy art gallery throughout the fall semester.  You are welcome to a reception following the fall play on November 9th.