The plate itself was made using chipboard and bristol board.  I incised areas of the plate, glued paper forms on, and coated the front and back with acrylic gloss gel medium.

This is what my typical workspace looks like when preparing to ink an intaglio plate.  A glass inking table, inks, ink knives, phonebook pages, and the plate.

In the image above, the plate is half-inked.  I used my makeshift dauber–the rolled form (made of old press blankets wrapped with white duct-tape).  The purpose of this stage of inking is to force the ink into the small recesses of the plate;  the ink is applied with strong downward force.

After the ink is forced into the recesses, it is then wiped off of the surfaces of the plate using tarlatan (starched cheesecloth).  The oily inks still leave a beautiful residue which prints as what we call ‘plate tone’.

After wiping the plate, I then moved it to another inking table and rolled it with a transparent blue ink.  I used medium force while rolling, which covered most of the plate, except for the recessed areas and areas directly adjacent to a higher section of the plate.  I used a litho roller (I think the durometer is 30), rather than a brayer because I needed to make sure the roller didn’t lap and leave a line (roller-mark) on the plate.

You can see a slight blue sheen on the plate in the image above.  Though I rolled the blue ink on top of the other, the two didn’t mix–I was sure to mix the blue ink to a lower viscosity (and higher oil content ) than the brownish ink.  This meant that not only did the blue overlay the other rather than blend, but that I also didn’t have to clean the roller after every application, since it did not pick the brown ink up.  I only had to roll out the ghost (where the ink had been applied to the plate) between ink applications.

At this point, the plate is ready to be printed.  I use a template to make sure that the plate and paper are in register.  I usually only print with the one blanket, the pusher, though I do use newsprint to protect and add pressure.  You can see that the blanket is pretty dirty.  It’s mostly dry, though I will give the evil eye to my monotype class at this moment.

The paper would be laid down next.  So at this point, I’d like to address the paper preparation.

The image above shows the paper-tearing and blotting area.  I used Zerkall Copperplate, which prints amazingly well and is a lovely warm buff color rather than a cold stark white.  I tore the 30″ x 22″ size into half, and then those halves into half again.

My love, the center-finding rule, is shown above.  I cannot live without one.  We tear the paper to better mimic the deckled edge which mold-made  (and hand-made) papers have.  The deckle, however, makes it tricky to measure the paper, because though a paper might be sold as 30″ x 22″, in reality it is larger because of the deckle.  If you were to simply count 11 inches and tear (to get half of 22), you’d likely end up with 11.25 inches on the other side.  Using a center-finding rule allows for balance which includes the deckle; it doesn’t matter how much the deckle adds to a paper if you’re simply tearing the thing in half.

Intaglio is generally printed on damp paper, to better allow the paper fibers to be forced into the plate recesses.  The usual method is to soak and blot the paper before printing.  Many papers, however–of which Zerkall is one–cannot be soaked.  In such a case, the paper must instead be damp-packed.

The torn-down sheets are misted with water and interleaved with an absorbent paper.  I used newsprint.  Fancier printers than I am might use blotters.

After being misted and interleaved, the whole stack is wrapped in plastic.  This preparation is preferably done the night before a printing session, and cannot be left for more than a couple of days (at least here in Miami) before the paper starts to grow mildew.

At press time, the damp-pack is opened, a sheet of paper is removed and transported over to the press, then put directly on the plate in alignment with the template.  No blotting necessary.  Though the advance prep time is greater, I find it to be a more efficient way to print.

The print, after immediately pulling the impression.  You can see that the majority of ink was removed from the plate.  I printed this at a fairly high pressure (zero on the stem, four on the micrometer gauge), though I did back it with many sheets of newsprint as well (partly because my paper was still rather wet, instead of merely slightly damp–I didn’t want to get the blanket wet).

Four finished impressions drying in the rack.  I usually pin prints so that they dry flat–Zerkall does tend to get a little bumpy–but for an edition of 50, that would have added a lot of production time, as well as pin-holes to the outside edge of the paper.

Once dry, the bad impressions are weeded out, the prints are ordered, then titled and signed.  Since this was a variable edition, I alternated the impressions depending on the matrix–all the odd-numbers come from the Knothole plate (the one in this post) and the evens come from the Stump plate.

If you’re interested in more of a discussion about variable editions, or a general overview of my ideas about hand-pulled prints, be sure to read the PDF statement linked at the top of this post which I prepared specifically for this project.

The problem with collographs is that most people actually don’t know how to make a good one.

A lot of people don’t really even know how to make one themselves, but nevertheless think they know about them.

Do you know how these collographs were made?

Collographs have a terrible reputation among ‘serious’ art-world types.  I get it, of course.

As a very entry-level friendly technique, a lot of novices are instructed in the method.  Of course, they then make novice, entry-level artwork.  The more ‘serious’ types then are accustomed to associating collographs with entry-level, novice work, and dismiss the technique in general.

You can see the type of novice work I mean here–cardboard plates, dry foodstuffs, wet sketchbook paper, using paint in the place of inks, and no press.  Like I said, I understand the negative bias.  Unfortunately, it interferes with people’s perception of well-executed collographs.

[The woman in the linked video seems perfectly nice and I mean no disrespect to her personally; I just selected the video because it contains all the stereotypes of what people think they know about collographs, which is to say that many people think all collographs are made like that.]

[EDIT: to see a more recent post in which I illustrate the printing of a collograph, go here.]

I encountered this negative bias recently in two interactions–one was at the Ink fair during Art Basel Miami Beach, when (I wont mention who!) an exhibitor (and publisher) of works that were clearly collographs used a different term to describe them.  The works were made by mixing carborundum grit with a glue, applying it to different plexi matrices, inking it as an intaglio and printing the plates in register in order to edition them.

Obviously, it’s a complicated and sophisticated process.  Also obviously, it’s definitely a collotype process.  We chatted a bit, and the exhibitor fessed up that his avoidance of the term collograph was to avoid negative connotations.

The second place I encountered the prejudice against collographs was during the jury process at the school where I teach.

During a discussion of one of my student’s works, a fellow jurist had a positive response to one of the prints until learning that it was a collograph.  It might be that this jurist’s opinion of the work didn’t change, but I saw a slight disdain come over the jurist’s visage as soon as the word “collograph” came up: “oh, that stuff with the cardboard”.

I demonstrate and instruct collotype a lot.  Sometimes I use cardboard.

Usually, however, I use chipboard (the difference between chipboard and cardboard is that cardboard is hollow, with supporting interior ribs, which means it squishes in the press and prints with a regular linear pattern).  Nitpicky, yes, but it makes a difference.

One major positive of collotype is that it’s an inexpensive technique.  A second major positive is that it’s flexible–you can print is as either relief or intaglio.  It also doesn’t require specialized tools (beyond the inks, press and press equipment, of course).

I adore copperplate intaglio, but copper is very expensive, and students are reluctant to purchase it (they usually don’t understand that copper plates are re-usable, in part because they become so attached to the plate), while chipboard (not cardboard!) only costs a few dollars for a fairly large sheet.  So you can buy it by the sheet—or just use the back of a newsprint pad!

Those hard ‘cardboard’ backs of sketchbook pads?  Chipboard.

You can use colloype to familiarize students with mixing and rolling out inks, ink properties, use of the press, intaglio inking, use of tarlatans, hand-wiping and editioning.

It is an entry-level friendly method!  Just because it is one, though, doesn’t mean all work produced with it is low quality.

A typical collograph of scraps and bits of stuff. Color viscosity inked.

The print above is a collograph from a plate I made as a demo for a high school weekend workshop.

It’s the usual glue-bits-of-crap-together plate, the type which is almost impossible to avoid when you build a plate live for instructional purposes.  Students need to be able to see you create the damn thing on the spot, and you usually only have a few hours with them, so scraps and crap it is!

This one is built on chipboard, with more chipboard, some cardboard, lace, yarn, paper, tin foil and tarlatan.

This particular impression has been relief viscosity rolled in two colors.

Viscosity inking techniques use the relative viscosity of separate inks to determine how they will be applied to the plate–the texture of the plate, the durometer (softness or hardness) of the brayer or roller, the height of the plate elements, and the order and direction in which the inks were applied–the different colors are all applied before the plate is run through the press, meaning it prints in one run–determine how the inks are laid down and the degree to which they blend.

The white halos around plate elements are an indicator that the above image was inked as a relief plate; where substantial height difference exists between plate elements, the roller, or brayer, will not be able to force ink into that area.

The same plate, inaglio inked and color viscosity inked (two colors), printed on good quality intaglio paper..

Obviously, the above image is of the same plate.  Hopefully, you can see a gigantic difference between the two!

This impression has been inked intaglio-style in green before being rolled as a relief plate with two colors using the viscosity inking methodology. It was printed on a high-quality, damp alpha-cellulose intaglio paper at significant pressure.

The white halos are gone (replaced by the green outlining from the intaglio inking), the texture of all elements is dramatically more impressive (ha!), and overall, the image is just better.  The image doesn’t mean anything, but it’s pretty, and rather intoxicating to hold in your hand because of the color and textural richness.

With the right knowledge and technique, you can glue dried spaghetti on a flattened cereal box and pull an interesting print.

A representational collograph printed as a three-color viscosity relief.

I didn’t have any dried spaghetti at the time I made the plate for this demo, sadly.  Only the usual chipboard, cotton rags, and tin foil.  I did use a flattened box, though!

The same plate printed as an intaglio.

This plate was sealed with gesso (which I don’t recommend–it absorbs too much ink for the first few impressions) before it was printed.  This was also made as a demonstration for a high school class.

I won’t make a case for these prints as art, but I assure you that they are good impressions.

That’s kind of a weird thing, right?  Most artists won’t make claims as to what is or is not art–at the most, folks’ll say what is or is not good art, and a lot of times they don’t have many believable reasons as to why.

One of my theories is that the inherent skill with which a work was produced acts upon the viewer as a signifier that something is Good Art.

Skill comes through study, time, and dedication–all of which are hard to avoid as a professional artist.  At the student or novice level, however, those aspects aren’t necessarily in place yet, and so skill can be hit or miss.  Like anything else, the student (or novice!) who works hard and strives to achieve can ‘hit’ more often than not.

Student work from my Fall 2011 monotype class.

This student (who I’ll identify if she wants me to!) used tulle, paper, lace and an X-acto incising technique before coating the plate with acrylic gloss gel medium with a brush.  It’s simple platework, well-inked and well printed, on good paper.  No dried foodstuffs.  Edition of 7.

There’s an odd grey area in collotype–what do you call a chipboard plate that’s been coated with acrylic gloss gel medium, but hasn’t actually had anything glued to it?

I’ve been calling it chipboard relief.

An impression from a chipboard plate, carved out with an X-acto knife and coated with acrylic gloss medium before being intaglio inked and relief rolled.

The print above was printed in an edition of 6, and is intaglio wiped (the lines of the wood are cut out from the chipboard plate–incised) with a finishing relief roll printed on intaglio paper.  It’s put through the press once per impression.

Really, though?  To be honest, the only thing that makes the platework different from the other prints illustrating this post is that I didn’t glue anything to the plate.  In my student’s work above, she didn’t technically glue anything either–she did use the gloss gel medium as a glue, however.  Acrylic gloss gel medium is a fancy glue!

I could call it intaglio, perhaps–like copperplate intaglio.  We don’t usually say zinc intaglio, but we do say drypoint on plexi.  We do say mezzotint.  Though I did learn a collograph technique which approximates mezzotint.  I could simply call it relief, I guess; wood and chipboard both come from trees, after all.  Wait–isn’t plywood made of wood which is glued together in thin layers?  So a carved plywood sheet might be able to be called a collograph!

You begin to see the conundrum here.  I can call it lots of things, but most of those things I call it won’t mean anything to anyone except printmakers.  So why not call it a collograph?

I personally haven’t been doing so because I’ve been being technically pedantic!  But that’s just me.

So here’s what I think.  Unless you’ve personally created a good quality collograph, don’t get snooty about the technique (and if you have created a good quality collograph, you won’t be snooty about the technique because you’d understand how tricky it can be!).  Judge the artwork, fine–I have no problems with that!

After all, there’s many a novice cook (or poet, or singer) out there with lackluster offerings, but we don’t look down upon food (or poetry, or music).

Even a good cook will use dried spaghetti and be found with a cereal box in hand from time to time.

One more thing: people are generally not printing collographs by hand because they prefer it–rather it’s because they don’t have a press.  Very few techniques are able to be adequately printed by hand; relief is pretty much the only one, and even then, pulling a good print by hand is not easy.  So if there’s a press nearby, don’t suggest that someone print a collograph by hand.

I guess if you don’t like that person and want to cackle madly while they laboriously develop tendonitis from hand-impressing their plate, then maybe.

Otherwise, no.

To the Last Drop, K. Hudspeth, 2011. Stone Lithograph with Monotype. 15" x 11".

The image to the left is of the work made for Dixie Icons; it is a stone lithograph with monotype which was

drawn, processed and printed during a summer workshop run by Frogman’s Press in South Dakota, at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.

This is the statement which accompanies my work for the Dixie Icons exhibit at the Fire House Gallery in Louisville, GA.

The work I’ve created for Dixie Icons was based on a Maxwell House Coffee advertisement from 1930.  In it, a bunch of high society white folks are engaged in a lively dinner party, and in the background, a black servant stands holding a tray of what the ad-makers hoped we would presume was an aromatic and lovely coffee in a silver pot.  This black man is portrayed in a stereotypical fashion, resembling Uncle Remus and Uncle Tom, while also simultaneously embodying the Noble Servant and various minstrel characters.  It is easy for us, as a contemporary audience, to see how this man has been presented as an archetype of The Other, rather than as an individual.

The white people in the advertisement are just as exaggeratedly stereotypical, but the stereotypes they represent are aspirational for white people: glamorous, wealthy, beautiful, elegant, witty, fashionable, etc.–certainly anyone who has attended a dinner party knows that a table full of such types is rather unlikely.  One could also say that the caricature of the black servant was also aspirational for white people—not, however someone they would aspire to be themselves, but someone they would aspire to—quite frankly—possess.   Since times have changed, white perceptions of the Uncle Tom or Uncle Remus figure have also changed.  Curiously, and unfortunately, white perceptions of white aspirational stereotypes have changed little.

The advertisement is a clear illustration of white privilege—the inequality of wealth and power which allows one to live a life of leisure, surrounded by expensive, fine things, while wearing beautifully tailored clothes.  Such a lifestyle always comes at the expense of others, both literally and metaphorically.

In my body of work, I attempt to expose and undermine white privilege.  Sometimes I try to be stealthy about it, as a direct confrontation is often received hostilely by those most invested in privilege, other times stealth is unnecessary, as whites tend not to want to examine our own privilege, or we deny it altogether.

In this work, To the Last Drop, I’ve chosen to single out a few visual elements from the advertisement: the glamorous woman’s hand, the form of one of the elegant stemware items, and the table.  When I look at the gathering of revelers, I see people who have benefitted from a system of institutional exploitation.  To me, the scene is creepy.  It’s creepy because I see this dinner party as a ritualistic celebration of privilege.  They’ve fed themselves, and now trade banter while awaiting the final ritualistic act of the meal: the imbibing of a dark Caribbean elixir—coffee.  Coffee, the cultivation of which used up untold thousands of black lives; coffee, whose companion product is sugar, the cultivation of which is also responsible for thousands upon thousands of deaths.

Where I live in the United States–Miami, Florida—I often feel more kinship with the Caribbean than I do the US.  The legacy of slavery, specifically as it relates to the coffee and sugar trade is strongly felt in the islands near my home, and the immigration patterns to our region make this legacy even more pertinent.  Even in 2011, colonialism remains a highly charged, relevant discussion; here we feel very little distance from that era of the slave trade.  Nearby Haiti remains economically devastated because of the complex political legacy of having been colonized and carved up for coffee and sugar production, even though it led the first successful slave revolt in our hemisphere.

I see these people—aspirational advertising sterotypes—at their dining table a year after the economic collapse of 1929, living it up, and I think about blood.  I think about all the blood shed because of slavery, lost in beatings, in massacres, in revolution.  I think about the danger of complacently accepting this presentation of whiteness, of the violence at the root of privilege, and of the inhumane acts which support glamour and luxury.  I hope that To the Last Drop evokes a sense of dangerous consumption.  I did not literally present either blood or coffee–the conversation surrounding privilege and violence is larger than that.  I was aiming for a sense of greedy indulgence, almost vampiric in desire because I am often amazed at how we humans seem willing to gleefully consume each other in the pursuit and maintenance of privilege.

“What on earth does she mean?”, you must be wondering.  Beginning sometime in April, my grandmother began having serious health issues which sent her to the hospital numerous times.  It was a fearful, fretful time, only assuaged when she finally ended up in a rehabilitation facility with round-the-clock care.  Assuaged on the matter of her stability of health, I should say, for it also began a time of isolation for my grandfather.  For the majority of their lives, my grandparents have lived with family–their own parents, their children, their children’s friends, their grandchildren (me and my brother).  More factually, we have all lived with them.  They have generously opened their home to us all, they have helped to support and raise and care for all of us.  When my grandmother’s 52 days worth of time in the “home” as we all half-jokingly call it, began, it meant that my grandfather was alone more than he likely ever has been.  And it was not good.  Without getting even more personal, things were very difficult in the family this Summer.  A lot of life was uncertain.

When life is uncertain, it also becomes more precious.  So there were days which were frightful and days which were lovely and loving.  My productivity, however, was mostly shot.

Avocado blossoms in my grandparents' yard, some orchids in the background.

At a point when things looked relatively stable, I finally decided to act upon a professional development grant which NWSA gave me: the plan had been to go to a printmaking workshop in South Dakota, but I had been putting off the nitty-gritty of the details because of the great uncertainty in my family.  Ultimately, I didn’t want to lose the opportunity, so I arranged travel at the last minute and dashed off to the wilds of the center of the country.

I had never been to South Dakota before, and honestly, I was somewhat wary of it due to their politics concerning reproductive freedom–a matter of principle; I often tell myself that I won’t spend money in this or that anti-choice state, but rarely have to put it to the test.  It’s likely why I chose to fly into Sioux Falls, SD rather than Rapid City, Iowa–if I was going to spend money in that state at all, perhaps I could mitigate it by spending it in the more liberal cities (the only abortion provider in the whole of South Dakota is in Sioux Falls).  Hm.  In any case: Vermillion, South Dakota!  They have annual flowers!  All manner of evergreens!  Cottonwood trees!  And a big floody river.  Which I somehow did not see.  I was staying in the dorms, though and there were many people staying there who had been flooded out of their homes, as well as National Guard types who had been assigned there because of the flood.

The workshops were run by Frogman’s Press at the University of South Dakota.  I don’t think I’ve ever been around so many printmakers.  It was gloriously nerdy.  And filled with many printmaking jokes!  Which usually no-one around me gets, so I was thrilled to laugh at jokes about chemicals, or OCD behaviors, or gloves or any other other dork thing we could think of.  What I refer to as the center of the country (versus the Caribbean portion of the country, where I live) has a huge print culture.  It was quite foreign to me.  I felt like a rube from the boonies.

The workshops were intense: 9 – 5, with about a two hour break in the middle for presentations and lunch, but you know litho (maybe some of you do?  I hope?)–it’s extra intense.  Our first day had us in demos until 6:30, because: litho.  There was a lot of standing on concrete slab floors, which played havoc on us olds and our knees and legs.  Even so, I walked all over.  I had to buy extra insoles, to put on top of my Birkenstock insoles, that’s how serious it was.  I loved looking at the plants and the architecture; it’s so very different from Miami.  I even saw rabbits just hopping about.

To be honest, I was a little shell shocked from all the family goings-on back in Miami, so I wasn’t in a very social mode.  I mostly kept to myself for the first four days, after class hours, and that was wonderful too.  I needed to be alone–I’m one of those types, introverts, who recharge when alone, and in my normal daily life, I don’t have much alone-time at all.  So I devoured my solitude, slurped it up greedily, reveled and luxuriated in it.  And it was healing for me.  I need a sense of the empty (potent! awesome! vast! amazing!) void (space, solitude, silence, potential) of life to make me want to engage in the business of life.  Recharged, I met wonderful people: fascinating, dedicated printmakers from all over.  They inspired me with their knowledge, their efforts and their quirkiness.  It was good.

A fake litho stone I made out of paper for a costume contest; I was Käthe(leen) Kollwitz.

I wrapped a visit to my Dad up into this voyage, so after South Dakota, I went to Montana, which seemed to be about the only cool (cold, even!) place around this Summer.  I did a lot of outdoorsy things, including Yellowstone, a fly-fishing lesson, white-water rafting, and hanging out in a 1914 Forest Service cabin.  I had a good visit with my Dad and step-mother, met a bunch of their friends, sketched the mountains and read a lot.

A morning view from the back porch in Big Sky, Montana

After the emotional intensity of what was happening with my family in Miami, solitude, hard work, print-geekery immersion, long walks, outdoorsiness, and reading managed to make me feel whole and energized again.  There was a lot I didn’t do, a lot I couldn’t do, but what I did do was worthwhile and necessary.

This view of the 1914 Forest Service Cabin shows a room jutting out which used to have river water piped directly into it to keep food cold.

My grandmother is back home now, and is mostly okay.  We had many family birthday celebrations, and a gathering for my grandparents’ 63rd wedding anniversary.  I don’t know whether or not they’ll still be living in the same house in which I was raised, come December.  I don’t know whether their health will hold out.  Many things are still uncertain, but at least I spent a summer wasting, a summer healing.

The works are diverse in technique, and a good number of students are in the show (I’ll update with a list later today).  There are drawings made with a drill, color viscosity intaglio prints, screenprinting, monotypes, aquatints, prints which were made using fake hair, projected drawings, sculptural drawings on wood made using paint swatches, drawings made in the style of ink-blots, but with blood, sewn multi-part print structures and many, many artists books.

It has been very interesting to see the relationships between works made in the printshop (books and prints) and the drawings/experimental drawings (made in the 4th floor studios and/or the off-campus Wynwood studios at ArtSeen).  Sometimes the printshop feels like a perfect bubble.  Okay, less perfect when some of the equipment grows legs and takes a (hopefully) temporary walk out of the shop.  The printshop is a nice working space, with lots of table space, its own darkroom, and various pieces of equipment; if one is so inclined, it can be easy to spend an entire day there, with work spread out, alternately working and thinking.  It also has windows, which: huzzah!   What it means for me as an instructor is that I rarely get to see the non-print or book work produced by students in my classes.  Their other work is either not in the building, or happening on another floor, one I infrequently visit given the numerous tasks which are always present in the printshop for me to attend to.

This show reveals connections between the media, some ephemeral link between works which involve the hand, the mark, physical process.  It feels in many cases, like students own thoughts are more obvious in these works, perhaps refined because of the direct involvement drawing and bookmaking brings, or perhaps because of the simultaneous remove and dedication necessary in most print processes.  In any case, the works in the show are strong and lyrical, and hold well together.

I’m excited for this show, and will update with photos in a day or so.

Art Basel Miami Beach and surrounding events were something I was largely unable to attend, due to the inevitable complications of trying to balance the schedule of two professional artists (one of whom–me–is also a teacher) with schedule and needs of our 8-year old child (who is long over the novelty of art events; in retrospect, it was perhaps a mistake taking our kid to her first opening at the age of three weeks).  There are several events I really regret having had to miss.

Progress reports for high school are due, college grades are due soon, juries are coming up, and work on various items relating to the grant is ongoing.  I keenly anticipate what little break I’ll be able to eke out of this holiday season.

Starting in January, I’ll be teaching a five-hour long, once a week 8 AM studio on Silkscreen at NWSA. Trying to switch my schedule from an evening class mentality (the intaglio class ended at 7 PM-ish, not including clean up or transit home) to a morning class mentality is among the most important and difficult tasks I’ve got to achieve.  Imagine starting a five-hour long demo at 8 AM!  [For those academics out there in the non-studio fields, I know lecture classes can be fairly draining, but envision giving a lecture while working out--that's a lot like what giving a printmaking demo is like.]  I hope my students won’t be late.  I hope there will be a magic coffee fairy godmother too.  During the “break”, I also have to make sure the printshop will be ready for the horde of screenprinters arriving in January (the class is totally full, and students were actually turned away), as well as fine-tune my syllabus.

One of the things I’m most looking forward to about the Silkscreen class is that there will be a high number of returning printmaking students, which means that the sense of camaraderie which is an important part of printmaking classes is already partly established.  I also love having a longer awareness of my students’ body of work and work habits–it makes it easier to help them figure out how best to use the processes for their own ends.

This year I’ve hardly posted any blog updates, which is interesting to me, if somewhat disappointing.  I think that I’ve been stretching mentally in so many ways, that it’s been difficult to reflect upon that process in a way suitable to share with others.  Every facet of my career at this point seems to have its own unique challenges–teaching high school is quite different from teaching college (and not in the ways you might assume!), forward motion on the grant at this point is primarily in the area of business meetings and real estate transactions rather than printing actions, and switching gears into artist mode for myself has been a further challenge.  At times it has been overwhelming, though exciting!  Putting all those new observations and skills together has been an ongoing, private transformation.

I’m in the process of building up thin layers of color by applying Graphic Chemical’s water-soluble block inks via a Duralar transfer sheet.  I’m aiming to build up a crisp shape eventually out of the negative space, and to that end, I’ve drawn my form in reverse on the Duralar to use as a guide while inking.  Normally, I use stencils to make my forms with this process, but I’m hoping that the slight imprecision of the edge after numerous runs will give an illusion of depth at the edges of the form.  After I’ve built up the water-soluble color to a satisfying degree, I’m going to use a stencil and the Duralar technique to apply an oil-based (litho ink) layer of color.

At this point, the impressions each have four to five runs–the single etching followed by multiple runs of color to build subtly blended tones.  I’m using Hahnemühle Copperplate paper in 300 and 350 gsm.

The first, published in the New York Times and written by Ken Johnson, is an overview of the Philagrafika print festival.  The article is basically a weak survey of some of the festival events, and it also purportedly addresses the nature of printmaking today.  [For good coverage of the Philagraphika 2010 print festival, I recommend printeresting.org over the NYT, or even the actual Philagrafika website and blog.]

I find the author to be skeptical of  (and somewhat clueless about) printmaking in general.  In the first paragraph, Johnson posits that “anyone with the right software and a good color printer can make infinitely reproducible images that are hard to distinguish from professionally made drawings, paintings, montages, commercial illustrations and other sorts of pictures”, which indicates to me that he himself has not actually had the pleasure of attempting color correction or monitor/printer calibration, among other things, and that he has never actually compared an inkjet print of a painting to the actual painting itself.  I’m sure that he also forgot to add, or perhaps his editors removed the caveat “anyone with a good color printer which prints larger than 13″ x 19″“, because we all realize that many paintings, drawings, montages, commercial illustrations and other sorts of pictures are a good deal larger than that.   But there I go, letting sticky issues such as scale and the realities of digital printing get in the way of argument!

Back to that, by the way.  In the third paragraph, Johnson quotes José Roca, an organizer of the festival, from an essay in the festival guide: “Fixated on defining the realm of printmaking based on technique, some printmakers have printed themselves into a corner, away from the center of contemporary artistic trends.”  Did you see that?  Slam!  Up yours, “some printmakers”!  Ha, ha–what a burn.

Of course, I know what he means–in printmaking, we call those “some” printmaker’s printmakers, and they do tend to not be seen as contemporary artists so much as they are seen exclusively as “printmakers”.  I doubt, honestly, (and by “doubt, honestly” I mean that I haven’t had the opportunity to actually read the essay) that Roca intended to bash such printmakers, but coming so early in Johnson’s article, after the absurd assertion that “anyone” can rival the quality of “professionally” made images, it reads quite harshly, and seems to call into question the need for such types of printmaking and printmakers.

Lest you think I am simply a contrary sort, know that I am one of those who personally prefers an expansive definition of printmaking–I usually tie the definition to repeatability, the idea of the multiple and the intent to distribute information (visual or textual).  I think that my sort of definition hearkens back to the historical outset of printmaking, and is not so revolutionary as many folks tend to think it is.

Anyway, here’s where it gets interesting.  There seems to be an arbitrary line drawn somewhere, separating an interest in or dedication to technique from the practice of contemporary art.  As evidence, you can simply take a look at the many types of printmaking used to show contemporary print possibilities, many of which involve digital and commercial processes.  The suggestion becomes: 1) that digital processes involve little technique and 2) commercially printed media also involve little technique, whereas 3) “traditional” printmaking does involve technique.  Clearly, anyone who has any awareness of digital and commercial applications will realize that numbers one and two not so.  The less aware among you may in fact be shocked when I reveal that the paper edition of the New York Times itself is not printed by magical elves using desktop printers in the basement, nor is its website maintained simply by uploading crap to iWeb.

What begins to become apparent then, is that it is allowable for a craftsperson (read: digital technician or commercial printer) to possess and be interested in technique, but that it is not allowable for an artist to also possess and be interested in technique (see “some printmakers”).

Now, I am not presuming that such a perspective comes from either the craftspeople or the artists themselves–I am in fact presuming that it comes from a lack of familiarity with the methods and history of printmaking overall.  [At this point, I will remind the reader that I have given Roca the benefit of the doubt/have not actually read his essay, and do assume that he is familiar with both--it is Johnson whom I suspect of being ill-informed on the topic.]

Worse, actually, I am presuming that this arbitrary distinction arises in the face of and contrary to a familiarity with and historical understanding of printmaking.  As evidence of this, the next bit of internet text I mentioned in the intro to this post becomes relevant.

Via Tyler Green’s facebook status update, I was led to a greg.org post on the machinations of the Warhol Foundation’s attempt to actively discredit all copies of a legitimate Warhol print/work, so that they cannot be considered authentic.  In the greg.org post, there was a link to a fascinating letter of response to these actions from a man named Rainer Crone who had worked on a catalogue raisonné of Andy Warhol’s (perhaps you have heard of this famous printmaker?) work as part of his PhD project back in the day.  Crone had numerous interesting points, beginning with this: “The artist had chosen at that time the unique and more modern production technique of silk screen over the traditional hand-painted ones; this new technique was a result of Warhol’s new concept of art-making and his rejection of the centuries-old theory of the artist as auteur, the unique artistic originator.”

Yes, the “modern” technique of silkscreen being perhaps better understood as “the commercially viable modern application of the stencil process which evolved from the centuries-old Japanese technique of stabilizing cut-stencils in a fabric-like web of human hair, which nobody but “some printmakers” were willing to do until they figured out how to do that shit photographically”.  Looks like “some printmakers” sure printed themselves into a corner, so much so that they eventually invented photo-silkscreen–CHUMPS!

And so: the centuries-old concept of artist as auteur, debunked so long ago, eh (at least in the 1960′s)?  Since Warhol ceded much actual production to other people, he surely subverted the notion of the sole creator in a way which since has altered the landscape of contemporary art.  Except, of course, that we still say it was Warhol’s contribution.   Except, of course, that the majority of artists today working in the multiple also outsource the technical production and nobody seems to be confused as to who made the work.

If you extend the relationship of technique/authorship to that bizarre arbitrary technique/no-technique contstruct mentioned above, you will see that as long as a technician (printmaker’s printmaker or commercial printer, equally) does not have the gall to claim image authorship, then they are a-okay.  So the printmaker’s printmaker becomes somewhat of an outcast from the contemporary art world, while those who outsource production still maintain authorship.  What went wrong with Warhol’s revolution?

At this moment, I have to interject that I cannot fathom how people can so clearly overlook the atelier system in traditional painting.  Honestly!  It is a well-known art-historical fact that painters such as the Renaissance gang (seriously, do I need to list them?) used apprentices to do a majority of the icky work for them and yet they maintained authorship.

Similarly, and this is probably a lesser known art-historical fact, printmakers of the same era (as well as previous ones) also used apprentices along with specialized technicians to make prints, while also retaining authorship–the difference, however, is that the printmakers had to fight to be attributed authorship in the first place.  Before the virtuoso engravers such as Hendrick Goltzius and Albrecht Dürer, printmakers were given about as much authorship as the magical printing elves of the New York Times, and further, printmaking before named printmakers served similar purposes as the New York Times, the National Enquirer, Random House, or your garden variety high-school underground newspaper.

[Important aside: Goltzius and Dürer (to name but two examples) were also massively skilled technicians, who became so partly because of the apprenticeship system--they trained under the Master Printers--and goldsmiths--of the generation before them.]

So, authorship was something a printmaker had to fight (read: market) to get in the 15th and 16th centuries, coming as they did out of the realm of commerce (and goldsmithing), and it seems that nowadays, if a printmaker is interested in maintaining a sense of authorship and also in being a keen technician, they get sidelined while everyone else, or to put in Johnson’s words “anyone”, who is not allied with technique may happily keep their authorship, the Warholian revolution notwithstanding.

Well, that’s just peachy.  Plus ça change, yadda yadda.

[The reason I have described myself in various places as "artist, printmaker, writer, teacher", jointly using artist and printmaker, is an act of solidarity with that exact historical invisibility keyed to technique; I may not be a printmaker's printmaker or a commercial printer, but I aspire to the technical prowess of one!]

The Johnson article culminates dismally with several unanswered questions after a somewhat cynical lead sentence to the final paragraph:

The upshot of all this is intellectually stimulating but inconclusive. Is printmaking dead, or is it reborn? Is it a meaningful category at all anymore for contemporary artists who revel in mechanically produced imagery of all kinds and fearlessly use and misuse whatever tools are at hand?  If you think these questions matter — and there are good reasons to think they do — you need to plan a trip to Philadelphia.

I’d wager that the upshot is inconclusive because the premises are incorrect.  Printmaking, even in the extended contemporary definition (with which I concur), requires technique, though the technique can be on the part of the artist-printer, the commercial printer, the digital technician, or “anybody”.  However, the art market won’t allow Warhol’s revolution (“…No one would know whether my picture was mine or somebody else’s”) to come to pass, because it is highly invested in authorship (see the actions of the Warhol Foundation itself as evidence).  As long as we ascribe to a 16th century authorship model in art (which we certainly still do), those who are primarily considered to be technically skilled will be payed a fee (or wage) while those who are primarily considered to be artists will be encouraged to cast their fate to the art market, and I think there are some serious questions as to whom among the two is better paid.

Also, you need to plan a trip to Philadelphia because the Philagraphika festival has a lot of kick-ass printmaking, not because you need to ruminate upon bogus questions we already know the answers to.

As part of the [Name] Publications book series, Beatriz Monteavaro created a book titled Quiet Village, which reproduces a casually-bound, slightly worn book in which the artist made many, many drawings inspired by monster movies and exotica music (See: Quiet Village).

Quiet Village also includes a CD by Monteavaro’s band, Beings, and includes an essay by me–along with a bit of cut-n-paste, ziney visual KH stylings.  With flies.

There will be a book release event this Saturday night, October 24 at Sweat Records, from 7:30 to 10:30 PM.  Beings will perform, as will Boise Bob and his Backyard Band. Sweat Records is located at 5505 NE 2nd Ave, Miami, FL, 33138.

More info at the Knight Arts blog here and here.