“Fifty Years of Printmaking” is a retrospective exhibition of works by Professor Donald Furst, and will open in University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Cultural Arts Building (CAB) Art Gallery with a public reception on Thursday, February 29, 2024 from 5:30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
A public artist talk will be held before the reception on Thursday, February 29, 2024 beginning at 5 p.m. in UNCW's Cultural Arts Building, Room 2033.
Furst, who joined the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s faculty in 1985, will retire from his teaching career in May 2024.

This exhibition will run through Wednesday, March 28, 2024. All works in the exhibit are available for purchase.

Gallery hours are 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The CAB Art Gallery is located in the UNCW Cultural Arts Building, 5270 Randall Drive, Wilmington, NC 28403.
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Donald Furst’s “Fifty Years of Printmaking” exhibition begins with drypoint prints from 1974 and finishes with work completed in 2024. Printmaking media include drypoint, engraving, etching, linoleum cut, lithography, metal relief, mezzotint, monotype, screen printing, Solarplate intaglio, vitreography (glass plate printmaking), and woodcut.

Works from the 70s and 80s feature landscape images with implied movement into the distance, frequently with winding roads or streams. Works from the 90s and after emphasize architectural images of ladders, hallways, and doors. These interiors often present ambiguity and risk in the suggestion of directions the viewer can choose to venture into the space. The dominant technique for these works is copperplate mezzotint, a method that allows dense blacks and an unusually broad range of tones.
Many of the prints in this exhibition were previously displayed in national and international print competitions in over twenty-five nations.

Career highlights include art colony residencies as a Yaddo Fellow in 1981 and a MacDowell Fellow in 1983.
The North Carolina Arts Council awarded Artist’s Fellowships in 1996 and 2006 as well as an Artist’s Project Grant in 1995 to create the 10-print suite “421 Nights.” The North Carolina Museum of Art invited Furst to exhibit prints in the 12-artist exhibit “Interiors” in 2000.
Furst took two visits in 2011 and 2012 to the renowned Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque to create stone lithograph editions.

In 2021 Furst was chosen as one of 28 printmakers worldwide to exhibit in the 10th Leonardo Sciascia Estampes exhibit, which traveled to six Italian cities, ending with Milan at the Sforza Castle.

Website: www.donaldfurst.com