Finding Latitude: The Work of Allyn Bromley / Artists’ retrospective exhibitions are often strange occasions. In some cases, they clearly mark an end-game, as if to say that’s all there is to say. In other cases, they offer coherence, a larger arc of evolution not understood before. In still other cases–and the current exhibition of artist-printmaker Allyn Bromley is a case in point–it is a way of marking the growth of work to date, with the understanding that there is likely going to be more to come. Finding Latitude: The Work of Allyn Bromley, now on exhibit at The Contemporary Museum, thus offers an opportunity to both reflect and anticipate.

The exhibition, which includes 50 works spanning 35 years, is shaped by three distinct conceptual strands, each of which provides a way of understanding Bromley’s significant contributions to art-making in the islands.

First, there is a clear sense of chronology, framed by a combined retrospective and prospective point of view. Since her retirement from the University of Hawaii at Manoa Art Department in 2000, Bromley has been increasingly productive, so the exhibition also conveys a sense of momentum. The implicit chronology of the exhibition reflects not only the shape of a life but also a sequence of significant thematic interests.

Second, there is the way in which Bromley has pushed the possibilities and the limits of her chosen medium. Bromley is a printmaker–one of Hawaii’s most noted–but her work is often informed by the kinds of “what if?” questions inspired by her knowledge of and interest in other media, most notably painting and sculpture. For example, an early intaglio print on a flat sheet of paper that was cut up and assembled into a paper airplane seems, in retrospect, like a lighthearted anticipation of the life-size figures Bromley has more recently sculpted by recycling old prints. Bromley has also concluded, at least for herself, that prints must necessarily mean multiple impressions; she often opts for a distinctive mix of printed and hand-drawn passages in a singular impression.

Why are artists drawn to certain media? For many, it is often a question of finding the right fit–meshing what to say with how to say it. Bromley’s early interest in etching and other intaglio media, with its emphasis on line and linear texture, was eventually superceded by her exploration and mastery of screen printing, which allowed her to expand her visual vocabulary with the embrace of a full palette of color, to print on surfaces other than paper and to expand the physical scale of her work in keeping with its emerging themes.

Third, Bromley’s work conveys a sense of sustained and thoughtful reflection on several key ideas. A predominant theme in Bromley’s large-scale screen prints of the 1980s was the celebration of the natural environment of the islands, and Bromley had clearly found a medium that allowed her to articulate rich and subtle gradations of color and texture as well as the soft fluidity of the atmosphere itself, in an often-kaleidoscopic merger of earth, air and sky.

But Bromley, like others, understood that an interest in the Island landscape would inevitably lead to a deeper understanding of its vulnerability in the face of development; her prints increasingly began to reflect this tension between the celebration of nature and the challenge of urban growth in images accompanied by troubling icons like surveyors’ marks and discarded shopping carts. In this body of work Bromley clearly established her position as an artist with a social conscience.

In the last decade, Bromley has turned that perception inward, moving from the fragility of nature and the issue of ownership-versus-stewardship of the land to the inescapable mortality that frames human life. In a parallel evolution of medium and message, these more recent works have become more intensely personal, often involving the artist’s examination of her own aging body, as in, “What is Our Defeat?” and the illnesses and deaths of those close to her.

These works also demonstrate an increasing use of handwork over a printed foundation so as to create unique, individualized statements that speak to both the one and the many, to the person and to humankind.

In addition to this powerful series of hand-colored prints, Bromley has also embraced a sculptural approach, recycling strips of paper cut from old prints into mummy-like figures. In a recent installation work, “What Color is Invisible?” Bromley meshes the themes of environmental and social dislocation into a potent statement on the homeless who exist on the margins of our community–moving off the printed surface into real space and time.

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