See ‘Ink in the Valley’ at the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens

Wading in the water, set against a hazy blue and purple background, a deer taps rhythmically on a washboard, its long, branching antlers serving as a perch for three songbirds. On one side of the deer, a bear wearing a coonskin cap strums on a banjo, while on the other an orange cat floats in a barrel while playing the fiddle. These creatures are “The Woodland Drifters,” a vibrant, woodblock-print poster created by acclaimed Marietta-based artist Bobby Rosenstock.

It is one of 70 works on display as part of “Ink in the Valley,” an exhibition running April 10 through June 7 at the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens. The show highlights a decade’s worth of fine art and commercial work from Rosenstock, who founded his design studio JustAJar in Marietta in 2009, where he does woodblock and letterpress prints using traditional machinery and time-honored techniques. His works are presented alongside similarly themed pieces created by West Virginia illustrator and screen printer Logan Schmitt. 

“People start looking at two bodies of work by two different artists out of Appalachia — different states but the same region — working with some of the same musicians and same themes, but different styles,” Rosenstock says, “and seeing how they kind of relate to each other.”

A wall of nearly 40 eye-catching concert posters serves as the centerpiece of the exhibition, featuring a mix of Rosenstock’s hand-carved woodblock print and letterpress posters alongside screen-printed pieces from Schmitt. Many are concert posters for musicians, including ones Rosenstock has done for Billy Strings, Post Malone and the Wood Brothers and ones that Schmitt has made for the Avett Brothers Chris Stapleton and Eric Church. 

The artists’ works also share overlapping influences, leaning heavily on Appalachian themes like nature, animals and regional folklore. Through their respective traditional artistic methods, Rosenstock and Schmitt create highly detailed works of art, with stylized lettering, light line details and bright, bold colors.

While viewers may notice similarities between the artists’ pieces, their methods and approaches vary greatly. Schmitt uses screenprinting, a method that involves pushing ink onto paper through a mesh screen, while Rosenstock uses a traditional letterpress and hand-carved woodblock methods, inking them before manually pressing them into paper with antique machinery. 

“Seeing an old craft like woodcut and letterpress printing, how it’s made and just the look of it; I think people are drawn to that,” Rosenstock says. “All this work takes a long time, and just being able to slow down and zone out on wood carving and printing and doing things by hand … just kind of helps me as an artist interact with the world around me.”

Even those familiar with his popular concert posters can look forward to seeing more personal works from Rosenstock, including “The Still Turning Point of the World,” which features moments from everyday life, and “We’ll Take What We Can Carry,” based on a poem Rosenstock wrote.

“I always think seeing a body of work together creates a bigger dialog,” Rosenstock says. “Because maybe pieces that don’t have the same themes exactly will communicate in some way with each other, whether through color or texture or process or look.”

An opening reception for “Ink in the Valley” is scheduled Friday, April 24, from 4 to 7 p.m. For more information on this exhibit and others, visit dairybarn.org.

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