Danielle Urschel has been active on the Bloomington visual art scene for more than three decades. The printmaker's work is currently on view with photographs by Michael Waddell in the show "Overtaken" at the Blueline Gallery. Additionally, Urschel is showing new work at the Vault at Gallery Mortgage in the show "Eight Bloomington Printmakers." One of those printmakers is her daughter, Izzy Jarvis. I spoke with them in their downtown studio
DU: I'm Danielle Urschel. I'm a printmaker here in Bloomington, Indiana. I grew up in the punk culture in northern Indiana, near Chicago. My first printmaking was in my basement, making anti-Ronald Reagan t-shirts and "No Business As Usual" posters to take up to Chicago to the rallies up there. I like to think that my posters saved us from nuclear war!
IJ: My name is Izzy Jarvis. I'm the daughter of Danielle Urschel. I'm a printmaker in Bloomington, Indiana.
DU: And Izzy and I share a studio with four other printmakersBloomington Print Collective, Bloomington's only non-profit collective print shop.
Maybe you have a childhood smell you associate with being a baby. For me, it's oil ink.
IJ: I think I am drawn to very graphic marks that show an expression of the hand and a human's interaction with a piece of material because that's stuff my mom loves and that's stuff that was around me when I was a kid.
DU: We both get off on looking at the same things!
IJ: Maybe you have a childhood smell you associate with being a baby. For me, it's oil ink.
DU: Izzy started going to print shops when she was about eight months old. I was an undergrad. I'd had a baby. I had to go to class. I had no childcare until she was a year old, so she would come with me. She was the baby at the print shop. And I think if you grow up with something, you just assume this is the way it is, this is how the world smells, this is what people talk about. Really a natural thing. I think we had push-back like all mothers and daughters have to have, but
I think we had push-back like all mothers and daughters have to have, but
IJ: At the art show, one of my friends said, 'Oh I thought this piece of your mom's was yours, and your mark-making is so similar. It must be genetic.' And I don't know if that's true, but
DU: Like musicians. If you hear musicians who are related and they harmonize, it's like nothing else. Two strangers couldn't come up with that. People have mannerisms that run in the family; I think that it's kind of similar with mark-making. Or maybe we see things similarly because we are related. Traveling we always go to museums and look at stuff. While everyone else is really bored, we're looking at woodcuts really close. It's what we're really excited about!
IJ: One of my woodcuts is of two people holding knives and contemplating what it means as women to need to wield weapons in a patriarchal society. And I have my newest print with these giant scissors looming over a person.
DU: We're kind of going in similar directions. I think we feed off each other. A piece that was in the show with Izzy is a snake biting its own tail. To me in a weird way, it's about the nature of violence. This snake is attacking what it believes to be prey but it's actually its own tail.
IJ: When when I'm making those images with knives, maybe that lends itself to the material.
People have mannerisms that run in the family; I think that it's kind of similar with mark-making.
DU: There's a real physicality to having a wood block and having to carve in, and continually sharpening your blades. And you get splinters. And no matter how you teach people to hold a carving tool, you will not hold it that way, and you will end up cutting yourself.
IJ: When you're an artist you work alone all the time. Sometimes I feel like I forget what I'm doing, and I'll ask my mom to come look at something, and she will always give me the right answer, because she is a very experienced artist.
DU: On some levels I think of her as a daughteralwaysbut more I think of her as a fellow artist who knows a lot of things I might not know. For example, I might say, 'I'll make you dinner if you come over and design this thing for me, because I'm stuck.'
IJ: I screen-print here a lot, and there will be things I just don't know. I have to call her and ask, 'What do I do? How long do I expose this for?' I don't know what daughters ask their mom about, generally, but for me, it's calling my mom for exposure times.
DU: I see a lot of myself in her. And then I see where she's kind of exceeded...My mom always calls me the new, improved her and I kind of think Izzy's the new, improved me. Kid's doing all right.