Heel of the Boot: Prints by Sue Coe: Traveling Exhibition

Heel of the Boot is a comprehensive retrospective of Sue Coe’s lithographs, monotypes, and photo-etchings from 1979 to 1997. 

 

Arriving in New York from England in 1972, Coe quickly found work as an Op-Ed page illustrator for The New York Times, and also contributed political drawings to publications such as Mother Jones, Penguin Books, Discover, and RAW. In 1979, she began to make photolithographs, taking a drawing and making virtually unlimited editions, selling the prints initially for $5. Gradually, she became actively involved in the various printmaking processes, exploiting the expressive potency of woodcut, monotype, etching, photo-etching, and aquatint. 

 

Coe has used prints as a vehicle to broaden her reach in expressing her outrage against inequities of power and the vulnerability of the powerless. Sharing the tradition of Francisco Goya, George Grosz, Kathe Kollwitz, and John Heartfield, she portrays the plight of victims of war, economic injustice, violence, racism, animal experimentation, and sexism. Despite its unflinching examination of the misuse of power as the artist sees it, Coe’s work also contains much irony and humor.

 

Heel of the Boot exhibition venues:

Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona (organizer)

University of Illinois, Normal, Illinois

Guilford College Art Gallery, Guilford, North Carolina

Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington

University of Illinois, Augustana, Illinois