Local artist Wayne Rice has been selected to exhibit three artworks at the 43rd Chautauqua National Exhibition of American Art, held at the Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts in Chautauqua, N.Y., June 14 through July 12. The opening reception will be held Sunday, June 25, at the CCVA gallery.

Rice’s three color monotype prints were among the 80 individual art works selected for the exhibit from nearly 600 submitted entries from across the United States.

"Getting three art works into this prestigious national show, when one piece per artist is the norm, is a great honor and a big affirmation of my ongoing ‘Faces from the Edge’ series," Rice said.

The selected artworks are prints that portray local characters loosely based on the artist’s life and travels in and around the Southwest. All of the images were created using the "monotype" printmaking process in combination with direct hand coloring and mixed-media applications by the artist. The chosen art works are part of Rice’s larger series titled "Faces from the Edge of the World" previously exhibited at the Cortez Center and the Durango Art Center in 1997 and 1999. Rice was influenced in this series by early Japanese "Ukiyo-e" color woodblock prints and traditional Navajo textile designs.

"Monotype" prints are the simplest form of printmaking and are a bridge between drawing, painting and printmaking. A "monotype" or single one-of-a-kind print is made by transferring a drawn or painted design from a smooth printing plate to paper, often using an etching press. It is a process that began to interest arts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The greatest innovator and practitioner of the medium in the nineteenth century was French artist Edgar Degas, who created more than 450 monotype. The qualities that make monotype unique as a medium are freedom, flexibility and the spontaneity of application.

Located on the scenic slopes of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York, the Chautauqua Institution was conceived as a community dedicated to physical, intellectual and social well-being in the early 1900s. The Chautauqua Institution enjoys an international reputation for the quality of its programs. The first National Exhibition of Contemporary Art was organized by the Chautauqua Arts Association in 1954 and included such artists at Franz Kline, Reginald Marsh and Charles Burchfield. This prestigious survey of contemporary art continues to be one of the high points of the annual exhibitions at Chautauqua.

Rice is an artist, designer and educator who has been working professionally for more than 20 years. He was an artist-in-residence with the state artist-in-education programs of Colorado, new Mexico and Wyoming in the recent past. Rice continues to present visual arts workshops to children and adults throughout Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region.

Rice was born in Chicago and grew up in several locations across the United States – New Jersey, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Illinois — in a military family. His visual-arts studies began at an early age with his mother, who studied briefly at the Chicago Art Institute. Rice later studied at the University of California, Berkeley and Northern Illinois University. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. State teacher certification in fine art was granted by the University of Colorado, Boulder. Rice’s prints, paintings and works in the graphic arts are exhibited in juried and invitational shows across the United States and are held in many private and corporate collections.