Processes & Permutations: Prints by Leonardo Drew is on view August 23 through December 8, 2017, in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, Modlin Center Booth Lobby. Leonardo Drew (born 1961) is an African American contemporary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He is known for his large-scale sculptural installations, massive accumulations of what appear to be found objects. In reality, his sculptures are made mostly of new materials — such as wood, rusted iron, cotton, paper, and mud ― that he intentionally subjects to processes of weathering, burning, oxidization, and decay. Jutting out from a wall or freestanding room-size installations, his works evoke the detritus of urban living and the cyclical nature of existence.

The works on view demonstrate the artist’s similar approach to process, experimentation, and materiality in the making of prints. Each work in the series is the result of a complex exploration of printmaking processes coupled with permutations of layering and the juxtaposing of diptych plates. The print CPP8 uses a flat bite toner transfer with soft ground etching printed in graphite ink on black gampi paper chine collé, while the other three prints incorporate hard ground etching modified by a crackle technique using egg white and gum arabic painted on the plate by the artist and allowed to constrict and crackle in unusual patterns by heating the plate.