– Yavapai College’s Prescott Campus Art Gallery invites you to honor the legacy of a beloved professor and printmaker while celebrating the latest innovators in the craft. Join us for The Donn Rawlings Memorial Print Exhibition, October 18 through November 17 at YC’s Prescott Campus Gallery in the Jim & Linda Lee Performing Arts Center.

The Donn Rawlings Memorial Print Exhibition will display the breadth and variety of Arizona’s Printmaking talent. The juried exhibition will feature 24 artists – from Prescott, Phoenix and Sedona – displaying every style of Arizona printmaking, including woodcuts, linocuts, etchings, drypoints, aquatints, screenprints, collagraphs, lithography, and photogravure, as well as engravings. Rawlings’ own work will be on display, alongside new pieces selected by juror Josephine Archer, an accomplished printmaker and YC instructor.

A child of Montana, who earned his bachelor’s degree in English at Antioch (OH) College and his doctorate from the University of Washington, Donn Rawlings arrived in Prescott in 1985 to join YC’s English Department. Once here, he became chair of the College’s Communication Division, developing a love of both interdisciplinary studies and the Grand Canyon. But it wasn’t until years after his retirement that Donn started taking art classes and discovered his passion for Printmaking.

“He had been seduced by that moment when you peel the paper off the plate to see what magical thing has occurred.” His wife, Carol, remembers. “He was fascinated by the many technical possibilities and set himself to learning them.” 

Donn began with collagraphs and their textural possibilities, before moving to collages. His curiosity carried over into woodcuts, linocuts, and etchings, which led him to workshops in San Francisco, to work with master printers and work with state-of-the-art-equipment. Every style, every experiment reflected Donn’s innate energy and enthusiasm for the form. “I want my art-making to reflect joy, beauty, celebration,” he once said. “[And] the task seems to be to find those moments and understand them in the very midst of the wild turbulence of change.”

The Donn Rawlings Memorial Print Exhibition runs October 18 through November 17, at the Yavapai College Prescott Campus Art Gallery, inside the Jim & Linda Lee Performing Arts Center. The Gallery will host a public reception on Friday night, Oct. 25, from 5 to 7 p.m., as part of the Fourth Friday Artwalk, and will be open for every performance of Anastasia (Nov. 8 -17). The Gallery will also host a free Artist Talk, with artist Deb Konizer discussing Rawlings’ work, Thursday, Nov. 14, from 1 to 3 p.m. 

YC’s Prescott Campus Art Gallery is located inside the Jim & Linda Lee Performing Arts Center, on the campus of Yavapai College, 1100 E. Sheldon Street, in Prescott. The gallery is open 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is free. For more information, please contact YC Prescott Art Gallery Director Tim Hull at (928) 776-2031 or timothy.hull@yc.edu.

Yavapai College operates six campuses and centers throughout Yavapai County and offers over 100 degrees and certificates, two baccalaureate degrees, student and community services, and cultural events and activities. To learn more about YC, visit www.yc.edu.