Arts @ Wells College

Rebecca will be teaching courses in letterpress, print, and book arts over the coming two years, contributing to Wells College Press publications, and working on her own artwork while here.

Rebecca Gilbert is a Philadelphia-based artist whose work exemplifies a dedication to traditional printmaking processes. Influenced by her years of experience in book arts and rare book conservation, her innovation in executing these processes in combination with cut paper and assemblage, push the boundaries of what a print or book can be.

Representations of bounty, fulfillment, longing, mystery, and communication between the realms of the living and the dead are embedded throughout much of her work. She interprets these ideas in woodcut, wood engraving, etching, and letterpress as those processes allow the integration of a high level of detail and meticulously refined craftsmanship.

Rebecca earned her MFA in Printmaking & Book Arts from The University of the Arts, and her BFA in Printmaking from Marshall University. She has extensive experience teaching printmaking and book arts at numerous institutions, including Maryland Institute College of Art, Tyler School of Art, and most recently at University of the Arts where she also served as the Coordinator of Drawing & Print Media within the School of Art for the last two years. She is an active member and serves on the board of The Wood Engravers’ Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and appreciation of wood engraving, its practice, and its history; and she is represented by The Print Center Gallery Store in Philadelphia.

Rebecca’s prints can be found in numerous public collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Gregynog Hall & Library, Zuckerman Museum of Art Archives, St. Bride Foundation, the Free Library of Philadelphia Print and Picture Collection, and Princeton University Library’s Graphic Arts Collection. She maintains an active exhibition record, and has extensively exhibited her work regionally, nationally, and internationally, including in galleries and museums in New York, California, Spain, Canada, Korea, Estonia, and England.

Among Rebecca’s most recent awards are an Illuminate the Arts Grant to support her current project, A Dance of Death in Two Parts; a Creative Research and Innovation Grant to support a research trip to England to study the history and practice of wood engraving; an Independence Foundation Fellowship; and a Winterthur Artist/Maker Fellowship. The latter two supported the research and creation of her recent body of work, Visions of Plenty: Observation, Perception, Illusion, and Reverie. Inspired by historic moveable book structures and optical devices, the work invites viewers to explore optics, perception, and the act of seeing by transforming intricately detailed prints into dimensional works on paper. The dimensional elements of the imagery and the work allude to different planes of existence.

Website: https://rebeccaprint.com/

Instagram: rebecca_print