Roy G Biv Gallery opened its doors to the Columbus community Saturday to help celebrate the fourth Gallery Hop of the year and premier the work of an emerging Ohio State student artist. The walls of Roy gallery, located in the Short North, were lined with lithography and screen-print pieces that are devoted to capturing the new in the old.

Rachel Heberling, 26, found inspiration for her print exhibit by gathering antique documents and visiting historic sites. Her interpretations of these muses were funneled into original black-and-white prints that were processed in her studio in Haskett Hall, she said.

“I’m always trying to look at what we are doing everyday from a different viewpoint,” Heberling said, referring to how she mixes history with contemporary art.

While working as a receptionist and store clerk for GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading, Pa., in 2006, Heberling heard of Roy Gallery from a co-worker who studied printmaking at OSU, she said. “She loved OSU. She said the first thing you need to do is check out Roy and Ohio Art League,” Heberling said.

She applied to have an exhibit during 2010.

Heberling was selected to display her works April 3 to April 24 at Roy Gallery by a non-affiliated jury composed of contemporary art professionals.

The jury included Catharina Manchanda, the senior curator of exhibitions for the Wexner Center; Mary Jo Bole, a ceramics artist and art professor at OSU; and Jennifer Benford, a curator for the Urban Arts Space, said Justin Luna, 24-year-old gallery director.

Roy Gallery has provided a space for contemporary developing artists for 21 years, Luna said. The gallery’s mission is to present the works of upcoming artists to the public while identifying the diverse culture of central Ohio, according to the Roy G Biv Gallery Web site.

Heberling was first introduced to printmaking during her first and only year at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. There, she enrolled in an entry-level lithography class and learned how to make prints using large stone slabs, she said.

“I went [to Dickinson] for a year but didn’t feel like I fit in,” Heberling said. “I couldn’t take many art classes.”

Heberling transferred to Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, a small fine arts school, where she could more appropriately pursue her passion for art. She graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, according to her biography on the Roy Web site.
Later, while studying at Kutztown, Heberling discovered her passion for printmaking.

“[I] fell in love with the medium,” she said.

In 2009, she continued her education and received a two-year, non-degree graduate teaching assistantship in printmaking at Bucknell University of Pennsylvania.

Eight of Heberling’s prints were highlighted during her premiere at Gallery Hop. She received support from undergraduate associates, members of the Roy Gallery board and many “gallery hoppers,” she said.

“A lot of my work is drawing attention to stuff we overlook — where we stand and what we’re coming to,” said Heberling, who grew up in the small mining town of Bethel, Pa.
One piece from the exhibit, “Vacated Presence,” is a print from a photo of a coal-breaker building close to her hometown. This work was composed to identify Heberling’s perspective of how this historical structure can be considered today, she said.

“They take coal from the railway cars to the top of the building. Then it gets sorted all the way down to get shipped out,” Heberling said. “That building is abandoned. I imagined what it was like in operation.”

“Autograph,” a second piece, appeared to be an image of a scuba diver to many in the audience Saturday. However, the “scuba diver” is actually a coal miner dressed in work gear, Heberling said with a laugh.

She found the photograph of the miner in an antique shop. She combined it with a scenic landscape she photographed of a small rural town in Pennsylvania to form a piece using the medium known as “printmaking intaglio,” where the images are engraved into a surface, she said.

On the artist portfolio section of the Absolute Hearts Web site, Heberling said, “The acrid smells of oil, grease, tar and metal in the print shop transport me to the same emotional and visceral space as the industrial sites.”