Allison Bianco is a printmaker who uses a combination of printmaking processes, namely intaglio and screen print, to depict landscapes diminished by massive oceans and infinite skies. Her vibrant prints explore nostalgia and inconsistencies of memory.
Bianco's recent series explores the Great Hurricane of 1938, which includes Stand to Sea, Catch You on the Flip Side, Ghost in the Dunes, and So Ends this Day. These works imagine watery worlds through the lens of maritime artwork traditions. In Stand to Sea, the rising sea of mythic proportions comes in the form of seven waves that travel over hundreds of years to the Atlantic where they reach land at the Point Street Bridge in Providence, Rhode Island on September 21, 1938. On that day one of the most devastating New England hurricanes caused the sea level to rise 20 feet up the seven hills that the City was built upon. Bianco researched at Special Collections at the Providence Public Library blending a myriad of scrapbook references, aerial photographs, whaling log illustrations and even sentiments of historic Japanese Kawaraban papers to produce a view of her home state of Rhode Island, with a bright and foreboding atmosphere.
Other works include the expansive Pouring on Jamestown, that pictures the eastern side of Conanicut Island in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, diminished by a massive expanse of ocean below; Winter Flounder, based on an old freeway exit ramp that, during cold months, transports the driver to an icy world with stone cliffs that resemble a mountain pass; Leave Your Troubles Behind where an oddly monumental sun casts a golden glimmer on the ocean, fireworks explode in the distance and a small fishing vessel hurries away followed by a shrouded sea creature; and Later that Day at Second Beach, that pictures Middletown, Rhode Island and features the weathered cliffs at shore's edge below St. George School, diminished in the distance. Dramatic arched fireworks nod to Ando Hiroshige's Fireworks over Ryogoku Bridge 1856-58.