John Roberts
"I have been working with presses manufactured by Conrad Machine Company since 1976. I have used them as a student, a college professor, and as a professional printmaker. As a college professor, I have seen the use, and abuse, that presses take in a printmaking studio and Conrad presses not only withstand this constant use but have given me years of trouble-free service. As far as I am concerned, this is one of the best tests of any piece of studio equipment. Conrad presses are reliable, extremely durable, and easy to operate. The quality of prints pulled on these presses is outstanding."
Professor of Art,
Keene State College,
Artist/ Printmaker
Bio
John Roberts
MFA, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1977
Artist Statement
Professor John E. Roberts has taught at printmaking, drawing, foundation design and painting at Keene State College since 1981. He received his MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1977.
Over the last 23 years, his personal engagement with printmaking has focused upon the intaglio process. While he has have taught almost every printmaking process during his career, it is in the intaglio medium that he has done the most research. He has received several KSC Faculty Development Research grants that have enabled him to develop new directions in his work as well as improving his own printmaking studio. Although much of his earlier work focused on industrial imagery from a representational perspective, his most recent work has been rooted in abstraction.
Professor Roberts is currently working on a series of large drawings and etchings that utilize found objects (primarily corroded metal from automobile exhaust components) as starting points. The work takes full advantage of the organic ambiguity of these unusual pieces of rusted metal. Not only do he draw from these but in many cases he has been able to actually ink and print the objects as part of the etchings and monotypes. The resulting prints and drawings are highly abstract images but reflect uncertainty in their form and conceptual meaning. Professor Roberts' has had several solo exhibitions and has been included in regional. national and international printmaking exhibitions. Most recently, his work was exhibited at the Sharon Arts Center, the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH, and the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester.
