Platemark: prints and the printmaking ecosystem

In s3e46, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Reinis Gailitis, an engraver from Riga, Latvia. The magic of the internet is fully on display today. Without it, finding Reinis's work would have been challenging. But his self-portrait in the style of Claude Mellan's Holy Face , the one with a single line emanating from the subject's nose, is a marvel. Ann and Reinis talk about how engraving is simu...

In Platemark s3e45, host Ann Shafer talks with Bob Schneider, who is best known for his music but is a serious artist as well. You may know some of his best-loved songs like 40 Dogs (Like Romeo and Juliet) ,  Honeypot ,  Deep Blue Sea , and  Peaches , but you will be delighted to learn about his print output. These are gorgeous etchings primarily made with Katherine Brimberry at Flatbed Press in B...

There's often a ton of art in medical spaces, but who are the curators of those health system collections? In s3e44, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Naomi Huth, chief curator and director of the art collection for NYC Health + Hospitals. Held within the Arts in Medicine department, NYC Health + Hospitals has one of the largest public (non museum) art collections in New York City with more th...

In s3e43, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with Craig Zammiello, an artist and collaborative printer with over 40 years of experience in all areas of printmaking. He worked for 25 years at Universal Limited Art Editions, where he collaborated with numerous artists, including Jasper Johns, Elizabeth Murray, James Rosenquist, Kiki Smith, and Robert Rauschenberg. Currently, he is a collaborative print...

In s3e42, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with Lauren Rosenblum and Christina Weyl about their exhibition on view at Print Center New York through December, 23, 2023. A Model Workshop: Margaret Lowengrund and The Contemporaries is the first exhibition to explore the legacy of Lowengrund (1902–1957), a visionary artist-advocate and entrepreneur. In charting the institutional history of the hybrid p...

In Platemark s3e41, host Ann Shafer talks with Susan Tallman, an art historian and essayist who co-founded the journal Art in Print and served as its editor for its entire run, 2011–2019. A regular contributor to New York Review of Books and The Atlantic Monthly , she has authored and co-authored many books, most recently No Plan At All: How the Danish Printshop of Niels Borch Jensen Redefined Art...

In this bonus episode, Hello, Print Friend creator and guest host Miranda Metcalf talks with Luther Davis, master printer and director of Powerhouse Arts Print Shop, Brooklyn, about his background and early career.  Powerhouse Arts is new player in the printing/publishing ecosystem and warrants extended conversation with its leader. This is a two-parter in which Miranda converses with Luther and t...

In s3e40, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with Luther Davis, master printer and director of Powerhouse Arts, Brooklyn. This is a two-parter. For this interview, Platemark collaborated with its sister podcast Hello, Print Friend. Miranda Metcalf, Hello, Print Friend's host and creator interviewed Luther about his background and early career; Ann Shafer spoke with Luther about the present and future...

Platemark hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig offer up a bonus HoP episode featuring a conversation about a single work of art. Occasionally we will drop a BONUS EP ONE PRINT, which will take a single work and pull it apart with an eye toward exploring subject matter, technique, style, and composition. The first of these episodes features the etching Battlefield , 1907, by Käthe Kollwitz.   We hope th...

In s3e39, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Sue Coe, an artist and social activist. The pair were joined in the conversation by Tru Ludwig (Sue is one of Tru's art heroes) at Sue's home in the Catskill Mountains, New York.   Sue creates art that goes right to the heart of an issue, whether it be animal cruelty, capitalism, authoritarianism, women's rights or any other progressive ideal. Images...

In this week's episode of Platemark (s3e38), host Ann Shafer talks with Jillian Ross, collaborative master printer and publisher with an eponymous imprint, Jillian Ross Print, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.   Ross returned to her native Saskatoon after many years in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she was the master printer at the David Krut Workshop (DKW) from 2003 to 2020.  There, she wor...

In the second part of their conversation, Ann Shafer and  printer/publisher Phil Sanders continue talking about the state of the printmaking ecosystem.    They talk about why supporting artists is important even if you don't like what they are doing, why that new Julie Mehretu set of etchings costs $250K, the imminent brain drain among our elder printers, and the importance of art and creativity t...

In s3e36, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with printer/publisher and author Phil Sanders about the state of the ecosystem. Phil has a finger in nearly every pie in the ecosystem, so after a Platemark listener wrote in to ask about breaking into the publishing end of things, Ann turned to Phil.    They talk about the history of print publishing after the print boom quieted down in the 1980s, why t...

In s3e35, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with Larissa Goldston, director and owner of Universal Limited Art Editions, usually referred to by its acronym ULAE. We talk about ULAE's founder Tatyana Grosman, and her harrowing escape from first Siberia following the assassination of Czar Nicholas, and then from the Nazis in France. Larissa talks about the early days of ULAE, growing up there, how the...

In s3e34, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Jason Scuilla, artist and professor at Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS. The university is hosting the Mid America Print Council conference in the fall of 2024, and Jason was eager to talk about the conference and its call for proposals of all sorts. The deadline is the end of September 2023; the link is https://fromtheashes.k-state.edu/ . In...

In s3e33, Platemark podcast host Ann Shafer talks with Ruth Lingen, printer and owner of Line Press Limited, located in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. Line Press Limited does just about everything except screenprinting. Ruth is a jack-of-all-trades, and loves book arts the most, from papermaking to typesetting to printing and binding. After studying with the legendary Walter Hamady, Ruth got...

What is it about prints and printmaking that draws such fervent practitioners, collectors, and fans? How are prints relevant to all our lives? What do all those people in the "print ecosystem" do anyway? Give Platemark a listen. Platemark podcast's host Ann Shafer looks at prints and printmaking in the context of museums, the market, critiques, and the print ecosystem in series one. Series two off...

In s3e32 of Platemark, host Ann Shafer speaks with Ad Stijnman, an independent scholar of historical printmaking processes, specializing in manual intaglio printmaking techniques. He is also a professional printmaker. Ad is the go-to guy on all sorts of things. When he speaks, we listen. Beaming in from Amsterdam, our conversation covers all sorts of topics from paper sizing and watermarks to acid...

In s2e29, Platemark hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig talk about Claude Lorrain, the arbiter of landscape painting in the 17th century. He worked most of his life in Rome and elevated landscape as a subject up the academic hierarchy by including small figural groups and naming the compositions with mythological or biblical subjects. He's known by various names that can be confusing. He was born Clau...

In s3e31 of Platemark, host Ann Shafer speaks with Lothar Osterburg, artist, professor and leading expert on the fine art of photogravure. These are basically photographs transferred to copper plates and printed as etchings. (It's, of course, more complicated than that.) In this way, it is possible to get images to print with continuous tone, as opposed to half-tone, or stepped biting.  The result...

In this bonus episode, Platemark host Ann Shafer coaxed co-host Tru Ludwig into talking about being an artist and art historian, and how being a professor in both disciplines plays out. It's a fascinating confluence of ideas and passions in one person.  Fun fact: Käthe Kollwitz is Tru's patronus. Another fun fact, Käthe is pronounced Kay-tuh. Tru's website: thepurplecrayonpress.com.  

In Platemark s3e30, host Ann Shafer speaks with Ruth Fine, retired curator from the National Gallery of Art. Ruth was curator of modern prints and drawings there from 1980–2002, followed by an additional period working on special projects in modern art. Since her retirement in 2010, Ruth has been working on exhibition and writing projects, as well as sitting on the boards of the Roy Lichtenstein F...

In Platemark s3e29, host Ann Shafer speaks with April Vollmer, an artist working in mokuhanga (Japanese color woodblock printing), who also wrote the indispensable guide to that form: Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop (Berkeley: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2015).   What's mokuhanga, you ask? It's a method developed in Japan that was used to print images that are probably familiar to you, like Hok...

In s3e28, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Linda Hults, retired professor of art history from the College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio. Linda wrote THE textbook on the history of Western prints, which any student of the topic will undoubtedly still have on their shelves. At nearly 1,000 pages, the book offers up more than 800 illustrations and covers print history from Gutenberg through the earl...

In Platemark s3e27, host Ann Shafer talks with Emma Nishimura, an artist and professor based in Toronto. Emma works in printmaking, photography, sculpture, and installation. Her work addresses ideas of inherited memory and trauma with a specific focus on the experiences her family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians endured during and following their forced incarceration during the Second Wo...