RELEASE ON RECEIPT


EXHIBIT AT FAYERWEATHER GALLERY FEATURES
CONTEMPORARY GRAPHIC ART FROM FINLAND AND SWEDEN

           CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Nov. 7 -- Nature and culture are the themes 
of a new exhibit, Contemporary Graphic Art from Finland and Sweden, opening 
at the University of Virginia's Fayerweather Gallery. A reception at 6 p.m. 
Nov. 12 will launch the show featuring prints and mixed media works by nine 
artists from Scandinavia. The show runs through Dec. 12.
	A lecture, "Contemporary Scandinavian Graphic Art," by Jukka Partanen, 
curator of prints at the Alvar Aalto Museum in Jyvskyl, Finland, will 
precede the reception at 5 p.m. in Campbell Hall, Room 160. 
	Eight of the nine artists featured in the show are women. According 
to Partanen, since the early eighties there has been an explosion of young 
women entering artistic professions, reflecting the general emancipation of 
women in Scandinavia today. These artists employ a respect for the old crafts 
in creating new forms reflecting the harshness of Scandinavian nature with an 
awareness of dilemmas of existence in the late 20th century.
	Artists featured in the exhibit are Outi Heiskanen, Eeva-Liisa Isomaa, 
Inari Krohn, Petru Rusu, Marja Ruta, Tarja Tersvuori, Eeva Tiisala, Annu 
Vertanen, and Ulla Virta. Their works were selected from Graphica Creativa, 
an international print triennial held most recently in 1996 at the Alvar 
Aalto Museum, as well as from studio visits, primarily in Helsinki.
	Eeva-Liisa Isomaa will be the McIntire Department of Art's Visiting 
Artist-in-Residence during the exhibition. Her photographic-based works 
depict her childhood home in Lapland and her "landscape" today: urban 
Helsinki and its world of giant commercial luxury cruise ships.
	Isomaa will lecture (time and place to be announced) on her work, 
conduct workshops in papermaking, printmaking and photography and teach a 
short course in polymer graphic methods, which combine both etching and 
photography and were first developed in Denmark and are used worldwide today.
	Accompanying this exhibition, in the informal Hotweather Gallery, 
will be a portfolio of prints exchanged between the faculty and students of 
the Fine Arts Academy in Helsinki and the University of Virginia. 
	The lectures and opening reception are free and open to the public. 
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                                                             November 6, 1997

	For more information, contact Sylvia New Strawn (804) 924-6122. 
Television reporters should call our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550. 

Visit the Fayerweather Gallery Web site at: 
http://minerva.acc.virginia.edu/~finearts/homepage/fywthr.html.