We are pleased to announce this year’s selected festival image, entitled “Twister II – Twist Again” by printmaker Betsy Best. This joyful, playful and colorful image is an acknowledgement of the human need for fellowship. The festival image is celebrated each year on all festival promotions, t-shirt, poster, and other merchandise.
“Twister II – Twist Again” Statement The pandemic curtailed some of our most intimate interactions…holding hands, hugging, dancing, playing. Twister II – Twist Again is an homage to the physical contact and play that we’ve had to do without. Here, the physical proximity of the traditional Twister game is extreme, resulting in a jumble of tangled and entwined bodies. Discerning one figure from another is formidable. The varied array of patterns adds to the commotion. Yet, there is no caution here, only levity and an acknowledgement of the human need for fellowship.”
This is but one way to interpret this piece. I hope viewers will observe my work through the lens of their own experience and construct a story or a meaning of their own. Above all, I am most pleased when my work resonates with an individual and provokes a nod of recognition or a smile.
About Betsy Best
Before Besty’s printmaking studies at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, she earned a degree in Graphic Arts from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. In subsequent years she attended a printmaking residency in Japan, studying woodblock printmaking with master craftsmen, with further printmaking studies in Florence, Italy. These opportunities are significant to my art practice. While in Italy she studied under the American printmaker, Karen Kunc, learning an innovative reduction method using two woodblocks. In Japan, she attended the Nagasawa Art Park Japanese Woodblock Printmaking Program. During this two month residency she learned the Japanese water based printmaking technique called moku hanga; best known as the technique used in the ukiyo-e genre of Japanese prints. This approach employs precise carving and registration techniques, and the use of water-based pigments.
She’s enchanted by the printmaking process, and respects its historic capability to make both information, and original works of art, available to everyone. Relief printmaking has been my primary medium for the past two decades, and my work as a graphic artist in my early career has influenced my aesthetic. Using a preponderance of pattern, color and line, stylized figures, and a personal visual vocabulary, she examines the familial constructs, and the meaning of home. Some of her inspirations include athletics, fashion, textiles, ceramics, and architecture.
Learn more about Betsy Best at her website: https://www.betsybeststudio.com/
