Woodblock Dreams

Final Print: Raping Darfur
I was browsing the the printblogs and wanted to point out to you, if you have not yet seen it, Annie's final woodblock print which is an extremely strong print that you have to check out. Also, she shows the process that it took for her to get to the final print.

Have Press. Will Travel.

Have Press. Will Travel.

Drive-By Press is a completely mobile printmaking studio built to promote the growth and democratization of art through printmaking.



Drive-By Press was created to bring the practice of printmaking to schools, groups, and communities with out the facilities or printmaking backgrounds. This fall our journey across America begins on the East coast where we will be printing with Peter Gorfain, Cannonball Press, and Dennis McNett at the Pratt Institute in New York. Later, we are also set to print with Jenny Schmid in Minnesota, Michael Krueger in Kansas, John Hancock in Texas, Kurt Kemp in California, and hopefully you! We will promote the artists work we print with on both local and national levels. Drive-By Press will support artistic education in the communities we visit while traveling across America by working with students and showing them various printing techniques. Our plan is to exhibit the prints we pull at the Southern Graphics Conference in Kansas City in 2007.

Crown Point Press

Kathan Brown


The crown point presses new website features a virtual tour of the press, a webblog, video interviews with the artists, an interactive question and answer section, and ongoing ideas about thinking creatively. I really think you sould all check out the artist converstations. It helps me to listen to how other people talk about printmaking to realize my own thoughts.

Here is the list of artists printmaker talks:

Kiki Smith

Julie Mehretu

Tom Marioni

Mary Hielman

Fred Wilson

Robert Bechtle

Ed Ruscha

Lorg Printmakers

Lorg Printshop in Galway has just put up their new website.

Lorg Printmakers

Lorg Printmakers

Galway is one of the most exciting and beautiful cities in all of Ireland. I am happy to find out that they have started a new printshop there. Next week, I'm leaving for Ireland again, and hope to go "printmaking spotting". I don't have very much time there before I head to Greece. I'm excited for Greece. I'm not sure what to expect. I have never been there and feel like it is more foreign than the rest of Europe mostly because they have a different alphabet. It will be an adventure. I'm excited to take in the surroundings and start printing again. My goal is to make 20 prints which isn't a lot since they will be monotypes, but I'm also taking an etched plate to experiment more with viscosity printing. I'm experimenting with the idea of creating black and white "Mandy world" images and chine colle(ing) viscosity prints onto them. It's not a traditional approach to printmaking, but I want to see what might come about. I feel like my blog has been suffering this past year, and hope when I get back to get more involved in it. I'm not sure why these past months have been so terrible, but i guess I have been putting most of my energy into other things which are more important, but a guilt settles into my stomach whenever I come back and dust off my precious blog. I'm not sure if I have regular readers, but I apologize to you, and will get back into the swing of things if possible while I'm in Greece, if not, then when I get back. I'm hoping I can get my digital camera to work in Greece, so that I can do daily reports.

If you have not already heard Lorg printmakers are looking for supplies for their printshop, so if you have extra stuff send it over there!!!


Lorg Printmakers

Lorg printmakers (formerly Connaught Association of Printmakers) came together in order to create a twenty-four hour access print workshop in Galway, Ireland. For the last six years, printmakers in Galway were fortunate enough to be have limited access to G.M.I.T. printmaking facilities through the membership of a print club, which allowed a capacity of fifteen artists. However, due to increase in demand, they needed to extend this facility.

Lorg printmakers aim to provide: A professional 24-hour open access print workshop. Both emerging & established artists with the opportunity to make & establish their work. Training classes to allow printmakers to advance their artistic careers by expanding their knowledge of all printmaking processes while also introducing artists working in other mediums to printmaking. Employment specifically linked to art, printmaking, and art administration. In addition, to promote: Encouragement and support for the development of a stronger printmaking community in Galway and to promote Galway as a major centre for the visual arts both nationally and internationally through residencies, workshops and touring exhibitions. Inter relations with other studios and collaboration with various art organisations. Awareness and appreciation of printmaking through workshops, community based projects, schools programmes and regular exhibitions. An environmentally friendly studio where the emphasis is on green products and materials.

Since May 2004, membership has grown in excess of 70 members. As part of their membership, members receive a quarterly newsletter, regular e-mail and text alerts as well as the opportunity to exhibit in Lorg member shows.

Recently Lorg were approved for funding from the Arts Council, while also receiving much support from artists, councillors and business people, not just in Galway but also throughout Ireland.

email: lorgprintmakers@gmail.com

Cannonball Press

There is a really interesting article on Artblog about a printshop called Cannonball Press in Brooklyn, New York.

The philosophy of Mike Houston and Martin Mazorra of Cannonball Press: "Inclusiveness and cooperation always get you further than elitism and exclusionism. By this age, I better have figured that one out. We think it's ridiculous that art is so costly. We understand fully why it is, but still think it's ridiculous. Printmaking has the capacity to be the people's medium—the democratic art. We believe in this strongly and are just thrilled that so many different people are able to afford what we make."

It's inspiring to know that printshops like this exist in America. While I was in Europe I saw many of these types of printshops opening up. As the contemporary art world moves forward in the direction of becoming inaccessiblee to the common people, it's inspiring to know that artists are thinking differently and are putting their values first.

Lower East Side Printshop

There is a great article in the World Printmakers website about Lower East Side Printshop.

Harlan & Weaver

“Felix Harlan and Carol Weaver met as young printers at a print workshop in downtown Manhattan. When it closed, the couple founded their own printshop with a rented press, inherited equipment, and a desire to push traditional techniques to meet the needs of contemporary artists. Now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, Harlan & Weaver is a well-respected specialty workshop where some of the best-known young and established contemporary artists makes prints, using a variety of intaglio techniques.
-Merrily Kerr



In Decembers 2005 Art on Paper, there is an interview Merrily Kerr had with printmakers Felix Harlan and Carol Weaver. Harlan and Weaver met each other in 1980 at Aeropress under Patricia Branstad who was Kathan Brown’s assistant at Crown Point Press. Harlan and Weaver later decided that they wanted to open their own small printshop in the lower east side of New York. At first they rented a press and printed with Jeryl Parker who had unconventional approaches to printmaking. Along with Parkers friends, they also became friends with several artists in the east village who introduced them to other artists. Soon they started getting jobs of their own despite the downturn in the market. Today is a very productive time in printmaking in New York, especially for etching. There has been a shift in taste on the part of people who are buying prints and in curatorial interests in small-specialized printshops. It was believed that printshops should be large and offer every technique possible. Harlan feels a kinship with other printers in New York and around the country because of this shift.
When Harlan and Weaver were young they felt a need to learn all printmaking techniques, but they became focused on more traditional intaglio techniques. They seldom use photo-processes or handwork after printing. The emphasis is more on what one can do to the plate. They enjoy working with artists who haven’t been published as well as more experienced artists such as Kiki Smith, Richard Artschwager, and Louis Bourgeois. Right now they so contract work but hope in the future to publish more.
- My abstract from Art on Paper Nov/Dec 2005

I thought this interview was so interesting. I was inspired to read that small-specialized printshops are becoming popular in New York since this is my plan for the future. It’s also exciting that etchings are becoming more desired by buyers. Hopefully, what is going on in New York will impact the rest of the country. This article also makes me think about what Harlem and Weaver said about wanting to learn all the techniques while they were young. I could relate to it because I feel like I wanted to learn every medium and technique while I was at CCA. Now, I’m rethinking this unrealistic goal and feel like it is important to master in a certain medium, and also have some experience and respect for other techniques.

Cork Printmakers

So, this guy in the foreground is someone I have to meet. Anyone with crazy-cool hair is an automatic atraction magnet for me. Cork is about two hours away from where I'll be in Ireland, so I must also check out this print shop. My brother is applying to UC-Cork, so we'll have to spend a few days together checking out this city. I'm interested in how this printshop integrates classes into the community.

Cork Printmakers are committed to promoting print as a public art form. We provide a professional, open access, fine art print workshop so as to facilitate printmakers and visual artists working through the medium of print. A range of presses, tools, equipment and materials, required to produce a body of work, are available to members.

As well as supporting artists, Cork Printmakers has a substantial role to play in the community. Public engagement is very important and so the workshop is very active in the exhibition of print in public and private spaces and embraces critical response. In addition, we offer the most comprehensive range of printmaking courses for adults in the country and through our artists in schools programme, which won an AIB Better Ireland Award, we bring the art of printmaking to children between the ages of six and eighteen, across all social backgrounds.

Crown Point Press

Last week I visited the Crown Point PressWinter exhibit. I didn't realize that the printshop was just around the corner from the SFMOMA, so I stopped by to take a peek. I was so ecxited because Crown Point Press has such a great reputatioin. A lot of famous artists go to crown point press to turn their work into intaglio prints. I wasn't particularily drawn to anything I saw, but It was pretty exciting being there. There were tons and tons of drawers with past porfolios in them. If you ask them to look at the prints, they give you pretty white gloves to flip through the prints. I asked to get a tour of the printshop, but the tour guide was busy. The woman told me to come back during the week when I can actually see people pulling prints off the press. That's extremely exciting. I kind of sneeked into the printshop anyways, and it seemed so huge. I'll have to go back after I get back from Ireland, and get a better view.

Crown Point began in 1962 as a print workshop, but started publishing prints in 1965 with etching porfolios by Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. It functioned as both workshop and publisher until 1971 when Brown formed an alliance with the New York publisher, Parasol Press. In that year Crown Point Press moved from Brown's Berkeley basement to a loft space in downtown Oakland, and --through Parasol Press-- began working with New York artists Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, and others who would later be seen as key members of the Minimal art movement.In 1977 Crown Point Press shifted its emphasis back to its own publishing program, and began working with a group of mainly Conceptual artists including Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Tom Marioni, John Cage, and Pat Steir. Artists published by Crown Point since that time represent a wide variety of contemporary art approaches, and many of them live in countries other than the United States. Art historian Susan Tallman in her 1996 book, The Contemporary Print, describes Crown Point as "the most instrumental American printshop in the revival of etching as a medium of serious art." From 1982 through 1994 Crown Point added Asian woodcut techniques to its etching program, taking artists to Japan, and later China, to work with craftsmen in those countries. ince 1986 Crown Point Press has been located in San Francisco, where it has a gallery open to the public and two large etching studios. With a staff of twelve, the press currently publishes etchings by five or six invited artists a year. It also holds summer workshops open to all artists.

I'll really want to take a summer workshop next summer, so hopefully the classes will not be full.

Limerick Printmakers

When I go back to Ireland, I'm going to visit the Limerick Printmakers printshop. Unfortunately, it looks like they are not offering any workshops while I'll be there. I'm looking forward to meeting the founders of the shop, and seeing what Irish printmakers are up to, and what they are thinking about. I mostly am looking for advice on opening up a printshop.

In July 1999 Limerick Printmakers was set up by three BA printmaking graduates from the Limerick School of Art and Design, Claire Boland, Kari Fry and Melissa O’Brien. Limerick City Enterprise Board gave Limerick Printmakers a start up grant in the form of Irl £12,000 to buy equipment and cover initial overheads.




Considerable support came from numerous people and organisations including the Printmaking Department at Limerick School of Art and Design (L.I.T.), Des Mac Mahon, Dietrich Blodau, Charles Harper; Mary Parkes at the Limerick Adult Education Centre; Cork Printmakers; The Graphic Studio; The Blackchurch Print Studio; Limerick Network Enterprise; Sheila Deegan, Limerick City Council; and Joe Buckley, owner of the premises.

In 2003 Limerick Printmakers received their first revenue funding from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaion. This revenue funding has been continued and increased in 2004 with an additional minor capital grant for equipment and again increased in 2005.

Double Elephant Printshop

I've never mentioned my dream before. I guess I had it nestled in my heart now for so long and daydream way too much about it. A couple years ago, I was lucky enough to stumble upon Double Elephant printshop while I was working in the South of England. It was the first printshop I had experienced outside of a university setting. I knew exactly at that time of my life that I wanted to commit myself to printmaking. It was the humblest of places I have ever been to in my life. If you know me well, you know that being humble, living humble is an important part of my life. It's a trait I have always admired. Simon and Lynn were the two founders of the shop...the most honest to goodness people I have ever met. I immediatley fell in love with the way they lived. The printshop was nestled in the back alley of a cobbled street. The building was two stories tall and made out of old red brick built by a crippling old man who had eighteen kids. The door was made out of wood, and if you peeked between the cracks real close you could just see the beginnings of a press. Going in through the doors you immediatley get hit by a musty smell, and that old recognisable smell of sweating paper and chemicals, but chemicals of a different sort. The shop happens to be an environmentally friendly printshop where rosin is replaced by acrylic medium, asphaltum is replaced by floor wax, and dirty dutch mordant replaced my ferric chloride. Strange new smells and strange new techniques. What captured me the most about Simon and Lynn was their commitment for reaching the community. This printshop was small and humble, but it spread its energy to other places such as schools, nursing homes, disabled people. This was the answer to all my questions...what good is art??? why do we need it??? am I wasting my time??? No, I am not wasting my time, art matters to people. I still believe that the properties of art come from a mysterious place. Such a dreamer...a silly dreamer. Anyways, this is my goal. I want to open my own printshop (with a little help from a friend(s)?) and give to the community. I often get very frustrated with public school art programs especially in the elementary level. As a kid I was so lucky to have great teachers who encouraged my learning process through creating objects, drawing, and painting. Not a day would go by without me doing something artistic. My little sisters come home with construction papered santa clauses and I just about freak out. I'm also frustrated with talented highschoolers in Oakland who don't even give college a second thought. I'm frustrated with the midwests love affair with Thomas Kincaid, people in old peoples homes with nothing to do, mentally challenged people who never get respect, and coco the gorilla trying her hardest to communicate with us (just kidding on that one). Honestly, I'm young and maybe have a "save the world complex" times one hundred, but I'm bursting with energy that needs to be put to good.

Below is a little bit more about Double Elephant and the website too.



Simon Ripley

Lynn Bailey

Double Elephant Print Workshop is an open access community based printmaking workshop based in Exeter. We have been established since 1997.

We run courses, promote exhibitions and provide open access to equipment for printmakers. We have resources for screenprint, etching, relief print and other processes. We run courses for special needs groups, in professional development and we outreach to schools and other communities. The workshop is run by Lynn Bailey and Simon Ripley.

You can contact us on 07855 206659
or through our web site www.doubleelephant.org.uk

Double Elephant was supported by ALIAS over three years with business planning, marketing and finance. We were also involved in the pilot scheme for ALIAS.

Pressure Printing

I like a lot of the artists working at pressure printing. I guess you could call the majority of them pop surrealists. Using unique handpresses Brad works with artists he admires to create unique and sought-after print editions of the finest quality.

I just love the presentation of the prints. They are so skillfully done, and packaged beautifully. I haven't started a print collection yet, but when I do decide to start, I want to pick up one of these packages. They seem to be very cheap too!!!

The Artists' Press, Newton Johannesburg

Dumisani, Mabaso
"Afternoon"
six color lithograph

I really want to visit this print shop some day. I used to work with people from South Africa. I loved hearing about the history of South Africa, and its current situation.

In 1991 The Artists' Press opened its doors in Newtown, Johannesburg, under the direction of Tamarind Master Printer, Mark Attwood. The Artists' Press started as a lithography studio providing artists in southern Africa with a workshop dedicated to the production of limited edition hand printed lithographs. The Artists' Press has been internationally recognised for its contribution to developing the culture of printmaking in Africa. The studio has initiated and taken part in a number of exciting international and regional projects.
Our Vision:

*To provide artists with the opportunity to collaborate with a master printer to produce original prints of the highest quality.

*To introduce visual artists to lithography as a new medium.

*To work with artists from marginalised communities to offer them new
opportunities and to promote their work through the collaborative process.

*To contribute to the development and expansion of art in southern Africa by focussing on excellence.

*To contribute to ongoing research and the development of printmaking techniques together with printmakers from around the world.

*To introduce global audiences to South African printmaking.

Prisons to Printmaking

Sorry, I've been M.I.A for a while. So much is going on in my life right now. I'm trying to get a few hours of volunteer work at the nearest printshop that I like. Also, I'm trying ot find other volunteer work with an art therapist, and a local art community program for kids. Also, I've been out and about enjoying the sun.

One subject that often interests me are stories of how recent printmaking shops come about. I find it fascinating what people end up renovating into printshops. Printshops often preserve history of some interesting buildings.

The evolution of Norwalk's Center for Contemporary Printmaking
by Brita Brundage - April 8, 2004


The stone building in Mathews Park in Norwalk that houses the non-profit Center for Contemporary Printmaking must have stories coursing through its walls, from the former stable areas where artists roll pages through printing presses to the upstairs hay lofts where a class undertakes lessons in monotypes. Where a gallery exhibits a celebration of the "solarplate revolution," female prisoners from the 1930s to 1950s once huddled against the wall awaiting bail. Former prison or no, the 19th-century building which sheltered horses for the Lockwoods Mathews Mansion Museum has all the traditional charm of large windows, low ceilings and wooden floors.

The police station across the driveway is another story. That squat, brick, charmless structure, which will be replaced by a new state-of-the-art police headquarters in South Norwalk in March of 2005, is awaiting some sort of judgment regarding its fate. The adopted plan for Mathews Park called for the demolition of the police station when the officers relocate. In February, Norwalk Mayor Alex Knopp announced that he was considering turning the former station into an arts center for performance and exhibition instead.

"In my view, Norwalk needs an arts center," says Knopp, "and it's always seemed to me the Mathews Park would be ideal. ... Instead of spending $400,000 to demolish the police station and then $350,000 to construct a landscaped parking area, let's use that [money] to be part of the financing of renovating the old police station into a Norwalk arts center." Structurally, the 1950s era police station may not be easy to convert. As Anthony Kirk, a Scottish master printer and CCP's artistic director says, "There's a lot of concrete and cells, and the basement was the firing range for the police department. There's [possibly] a lot of lead contamination in there."



Though the Norwalk planning commission removed money for a feasibility study, Mayor Knopp says he is having an engineering audit done on the existing building, using in-house staff and Grubb & Ellis, who manage many of the city's buildings.

Right now, says the mayor, "it's still in the conceptual stage. ... This really doesn't become an issue that's ripe for decision until quite some time away."

Kirk is ready to welcome any additional arts development to the patch of pavement he shares with Lockwoods, Stepping Stones Children's Museum and the YMCA across the street. "It's not competition," he said. "The development planned between Wall Street and the Maritime Center for business and residential will offer more to do locally for families who want to walk around."

With its historical presence, CCP already has something no new building can capture. And Kirk and crew could not have put it to more appropriate use. The old printing presses, the etched plates and inks are ancient art tools. "If Rembrandt were here, he'd know what I'm doing," Kirk said, peering over his glasses at a mezzotint, his hands stained with black ink. While the center does include a digital production room upstairs for manipulating images in photoshop, as local inner city kids are being taught to do through a program called Arts Task Force, it's the classic papermaking and printmaking techniques that are the center's pride.

"People say there is a lessened interest in traditional printmaking," said Kirk, "But I can't believe all that knowledge will disappear. Can you imagine in 50 years people saying, 'What is a dark room'?"

While CCP has had no trouble attracting wealthier Fairfield County women to its classes and lectures, it's had to work a bit more concertedly to find diversity. Last year they scored a few points shy of the total necessary to garner a grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts because of a lack of racial diversity. Kirk has since made it his mission to expand the CCP's racial reach. The next exhibit, works from students representing 21 area high schools, will showcase the fruits of CCP's labor. From George Washington Carver Center in Norwalk to Darien High School, the resulting self-portraits from two courses taught by artist Benny Andrews should tell an interesting story about CCP's ongoing evolution. Upstairs, where Ronnie Maher of Briggs High School teaches photography to after-school students, kids are given digital cameras to snap shots of their home environments, often brick-bound projects bordered by fencing. One picture shows the back of a police officer, another shows kids in a desolate playground. All photos are black and white and give an honest portrayal of the forlorn places these students return to every afternoon.

A few steps from CCP's back door, another story is unfolding in a cottage that was renovated and opened last year at the cost of $250,000. The project was funded half by the city and state and half by private donations. There, in a cozy two-bedroom-one-bath house with two large printing presses and a small kitchen, artists receive a stipend to take up residence and complete a series of work in private. The first artist the center welcomed to stay was Scotland-based artist Paul Furneaux, an award-winning 40-year-old painter and printer who lost nearly all of 15 years' worth of work as well as his tools and supplies in the raging "Old Town blaze" in Edinburgh in 2002. Having lost his woodblocks, his prints and nearly all of his possessions, the trip to Norwalk afforded Furneaux and his family a chance to rebuild.

Currently, prints depicting Manhattan on the back of a whale in bright red and blue line the cottage's walls. They are the work of famed Czechoslovakian children's book author, illustrator and filmmaker Peter Sis, who collaborated with Bob Dylan on the film You've Got to Serve Somebody in 1983 and won a McArthur Fellowship for his pictorial children's books. Now living in Tarrytown, N.Y., Sis is using the solitude of the cottage to make etchings and reproduce prints of a poster he made for the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

"This place frees an artist from the cares of the world for a while," said Kirk.

Fifteen years ago, the cottage was derelict, full of debris. One can only hope the old police station willget razed or refurbished long before the same neglect sets in.