Akron Exhibition Poster & Invite

Akron Exhibition Poster

Silk screen, 9.75 x 15"

1964, Edinburgh

While I was studying at the Edinburgh College of Art, I met their requirement to produce at least one silk-screen piece by doing this poster and invitation (below) for a joint exhibition with Norman Schulman (the ceramics instructor at the Toledo Museum) at the Akron Art Institute, which I had arranged before I left Toledo.

The poster is silk-screened on black paper in four colors (red, pink, green, and white).  The invitation, on gray paper, is silk-screened in two colors and the text imprinted by letterpress.

I finished the project in January and sent the copies by surface mail to Norm for mailing and distribution.  It was my first silk-screen piece, and far as I can recall, I never did another.

Akron Exhibition Invitation
Letterpress and silk screen, 8 x 4"
1964, Edinburgh (2 copies)

(Ed. Note - This show got a small mention - see below - in the March 17th, 1964 edition of the Toledo Blade.  Elsewhere in the same article, one of David's previous co-exhibitors - sculptor David Hysell - gets a mention as well.  The paper announces that Hysell has an upcoming solo sculpture show at a gallery in Omaha, NB, and that he has moved on from Toledo to take a teaching position at Drake University in Des Moines, IA)

Gallery 8 Invitation

Gallery 8 Invitation
Letterpress and tipped-on offset
lithograph, 6.25 x 4.75"
1963, Toledo OH

"Gallery 8" in the Toledo Museum of Art was often used for exhibitions of work by local or area artists, including this one which I shared with sculptor David Hysell, a sculptor on the teaching staff at the museum.

For this invitation, I "cannibalized" extra copies of several of the offset-lithograph landscapes I had produced during the two previous years.  David Hysell, who was admirably easy-going, did not seem to mind that the invitation featured my work and ignored his.

(Ed. Note - while David's invite "ignores" Hysell's work, a story in the February 5, 1963 edition of the Toledo Blade mentions Hysell at some length, albeit after noting David May's inclusion in the 20th American Drawings Annual.)