JAMESTOWN – The Weeks Gallery on Jamestown Community College’s Jamestown Campus will host a reception from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 31 to open the Printmaking: Art, Process, Community exhibition. The event is free and open to the public.

The exhibition features the work of fine art printmakers exploring a range of aesthetic approaches and techniques, including the centuries-old processes of relief, intaglio, screen printing and the more recently developed processes of digital printing. The printmaker’s process the process behind the artwork will be shown along with finished artwork, a selection of artists’ proofs and specialized tools associated with varied techniques, included a tabletop press.

The exquisite naturalism of Katja Oxman and Art Werger, established masters in the field, will be exhibited with the abstract explorations of nature developed by Bonnie Ashmore-Davis, Betsey Garand and Tom Raneses. Mixed media, digital and found object works by John James Anderson, Teto Elsiddique and Don Kimes are also featured.

Weger’s figurative compositions, often composed of dozens of individually etching plates, depict men and women caught up in psychologically charged narrative. Very different in character are Oxman’s intricate color etchings of quiet still lifes of postcards from museum gift shops, windows, potted plants, lacquer boxes, feathers and porcelain bowls.

With the chemistry in nature in mind, Ashmore-Davis draws the cellular patterns of the chemotherapy drugs that fought her breast cancer, while Garand composes her delicate compositions using an invented language inspired by petroglyphs and the shapes she finds in close observation of nature.

Kimes is artistic director of Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution where Tom Raneses teaches printmaking and drawing. The other artists featured in the exhibition have either taught, taken classes or exhibited together at Chautauqua.

Both Kimes and Anderson make use of digital printing in their art. When Kimes’s home and studio were destroyed in a flood in 2003, he salvaged and scanned the mud-soaked slides and photographs which documented his life’s work. Using inkArt Werger, Bronzino Dream, 2013, color etching and aquatint, 24″ x 36″ jet prints from these ruined traces of lost artworks as an under layer, Kimes lightly applies paint with a brush, further abstracting already illegible images.

Like many artists today, Anderson uses commercial digital printing to present his conceptual art projects. Maintenance Required (2007-14) is Anderson’s delightful documentation of all the fire hydrants tagged for maintenance in the artist’s Washington, DC neighborhood.

Elsiddique was born in England in 1982 and was raised in Sudan and Canada. He studied at the University of Lethbridge, Ontario College of Art and Design University and is a recent graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Elsiddique is currently participating in a yearlong residency in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

Using spray paint and plastic bubble wrap as his “matrix,” Elsiddique will make one large print on a wall of the Weeks Gallery and another in JCC’s Hamilton Collegiate Center. The public is invited to watch him create the installations which will open on January 31; call the gallery at 716-338-1301 for details.

The exhibition and reception are made possible by support from JCC, JCC Faculty Student Association and the JCC Foundation.

The exhibition is on display through March 26. Weeks Gallery director Patricia Briggs will lead an informal discussion about the exhibition during a brownbag lunch session at noon on March 5.

The Weeks Gallery is located on the second floor of the Arts and Sciences Center. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Friday.

Visit weeksgallery.sunyjcc.edu for more information on events and programing.