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38th Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition brings global art to Peoria's galleries

Some of the pieces from the 38th Bradley International Print and Drawing exhibition featured in Bradley University's Heuser Gallery.
Bradley University
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art.bradley.edu
Some of the pieces from the 38th Bradley International Print and Drawing exhibition featured in Bradley University's Heuser Gallery.

The 38th Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition is decorating the walls of multiple Peoria galleries with 134 pieces from 109 different artists through Friday, Mar. 31st.

Peoria Art Guild Curator John Heintzman says the competition was started by Ernest Freed. He hoped to give families access to affordable original art post-World War II. The biennial competition went international in 1995. It’s the second oldest and most continuous competition of its kind in the United States.

“Drawing is not always recognized as a discipline all to itself,” said Heintzman. “Usually, it's thought of as more of a preparatory process where people, whether you're doing a sculpture, whether you're doing a painting, or whether you're doing a print that a lot of times you'll do drawings in preparation for the actual work.”

But the Bradley International puts drawing and printing work on display on its own merits. Heintzman says this year’s submissions numbered more than 2,400 artists before being narrowed down to 109. A handful of the pieces are from Central Illinois artists, such as Bradley professor Heather Brammeier, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville’s Ryan Horvath and woodcut artists Alex Carmona and Cathie Crawford.

“She [Crawford] does reduction woodcuts where the wood cut is carved out of each printing process, each color. She reduces the matrix or the board,” said Heintzman. “So she cuts away more than she rethinks it, and she reprints it. And so it's an additive process, but she's reducing the image that she's working with.”

Tyanna Buie, Assistant Professor/Section Chair of Printmaking at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, juried this year’s exhibition. Heintzman says the works are on display at both of Bradley University’s on-campus galleries, the Peoria Riverfront Museum and the Peoria Art Guild.

Collin Schopp is a reporter at WCBU. He joined the station in 2022.