Fran Bull: The Art Life, and Helen Schmidt: Between Worlds

Internationally acclaimed artist Fran Bull lives, paints and teaches in Brandon, Vermont, and works in collaboration with a master printer in Barcelona. She shows and is collected worldwide, and her work resides in multiple museum and private collections. Her solo exhibit, The Art Life, (September 1 – October 15), features sculpture, etchings and acrylic paintings with sharpies and ink, which are at once joyous, provocative, searching and elegant.

Long time Putney artist and teacher Helen Schmidt began her career in 1989 in the South Bronx as an advocate for unhoused women and children. Upon moving to Vermont, she worked as a legal advocate at the Women’s Freedom Center and taught art to at-risk teenage girls. Schmidt has taught locally for almost thirty years and since 2019 is the Printmaking Teacher at The Putney School.

Schmidt is drawn to objects and materials which have been discarded or left behind, to be repurposed or transformed into sculpture or hand-pulled prints. “I often use the materials I find as surfaces to print on. I ink them up and print them onto handmade papers, then adhere them onto my intaglio prints.”