Platemark: prints and the printmaking ecosystem

Platemark s3e26's guest is Jennifer Mack-Watkins, an artist and children's book illustrator based in Savannah, GA. Her work looks at social conformities that limit us and box us in, whether beauty, relationships, body image, power, or gender roles. Her work often features young African-American children playing, celebrating their innocence and freedom, as well as imagination. Jennifer recently ill...

Platemark s3e25's guest is Michael Barnes, an artist and professor at Northern Illinois University who specializes in lithography. In addition to deep knowledge of how lithography works, Michael is also an historian of the technique and a collector. Michael's prints are set in strange desolate lands and feature figures engaged in absurd tasks. While these surreal visions come straight from the art...

In s2e28, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig conclude their two-part conversation about Claude Mellan. An encounter with Mellan's best-known work,  The Holy Face of Christ on St. Veronica's Sudarium , is to be a witness to greatness. The engraving is an extraordinary feat by Claude Mellan and is a high-water mark in the history of prints. The artist had a magical ability to create an image of unparal...

In s3e24, host Ann Shafer speaks with Steve Goddard, curator emerita from the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Steve's specialty is prints of northern Europe (1450–present), although he has been known to stray into the graphic arts of the World War One era, as well as prints that sit at the intersection of art and the biological sciences. I'm sharing some of his favor...

In s2e27, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig begin a two-part conversation about Claude Mellan, who engraved the most astonishing portrait of Jesus Christ in the history of art. In fact, if it weren't for his print of the Holy Face on the Sudarium, Mellan may have dropped out of sight. But, he is worth looking at. He brought something to portraiture that is worth noting: a humanity and tenderness tha...

In Platemark s3e23, host Ann Shafer speaks with Kimberly Henrikson, Executive Director, Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT. CCP offers myriad services from contract printing, to artist's residencies, classes, workshops, and exhibitions. It really does it all. As CCP's executive director and administrator, Kimberly not only makes sure the lights are on, but also runs the budgets, ra...

In s2e26, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig conclude their conversation about Jacques Callot, where there is always more than meets the eye. He's of interest for many reasons, including his practice of making faster-to-create etchings look like more-time-consuming engravings using his éschoppe . He is the first printmaker in Western art to record the atrocities of war. He heads up any list of artist...

In Platemark s3e22, host Ann Shafer talks with Laura Einstein, manager of the Gallery at the Met Store. Tucked away on the mezzanine of the bookstore at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a gallery space where limited edition, fine art prints are available for purchase. The Gallery (formerly known as the Mezzanine Gallery) has been a somewhat hidden gem at the Met since opening in the 1970s. Really...

In s2e25, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig take an in-depth look at Jacques Callot, who is the first printmaker in Western art to record the atrocities of war. He heads up any list of artists using prints to spread news far and wide about societal ills through visual means. He created some 1,400 prints in his career (no paintings !) and made some of the most remarkable and smallest prints ever. Thi...

In Platemark s3e21, host Ann Shafer talks with Pam Paulson, founder of Paulson Fontaine Press, Berkeley, California. After earning her MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1982 (she was a teaching assistant for Robert Colescott), Pam cut her teeth in printmaking at Crown Point Press in downtown San Francisco. There she worked with luminaries such as John Cage and Richard Diebenk...

In Platemark s3e20, host Ann Shafer talks with Kimberli Gant, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. While Kimberli's specialty isn't in prints per se, she is one of those unusual non-print curators who likes and appreciates prints and incorporates them into her projects. Among many projects, her work on Jacob Lawrence and his time in Nigeria led to the exhibition, Black Or...

Platemark s2e24 concludes hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig's conversation on reproductive prints. The stars of this episode are Hendrick Goltzius and Peter Paul Rubens. It's about the business of prints, artists getting their designs out there, and how these very transportable pieces of paper travelled throughout Europe and became catalogues of images for artists. Paper museums, if you will. Once a...

In s3e19, host Ann Shafer talks with Maryanne Ellison Simmons, printer and owner of Wildwood Press in St. Louis, MO. She and her husband, baseball hall-of-famer Ted Simmons, also collect contemporary art. A large portion of the collection is now at the Saint Louis Art Museum where it was celebrated in an exhibition in 2022. Listeners may remember that Ann and Tru Ludwig traveled to St. Louis to se...

In s3e18, host Ann Shafer talks with dealer Susan Teller, whose eponymous gallery operates out of the Mana Fine Arts facility in Jersey City, NJ. Susan specializes in American paintings and works on paper of the mid-twentieth century. She also works with multiple artists' estates including Peggy Bacon, William Baziotes, Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Sue Fuller, Michael J. Gallagher, Peter Grippe, Fannie...

Platemark s2e23 continues hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig's conversation on reproductive prints. Once again, for clarity, a reproductive print is one in which an artist creates a design (a drawing, painting, sculpture) and another artist creates a print after that original design. These can be sanctioned by the first artist or not or they can occur long after the first artist's death. It is custom...

In s3e17, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with print dealer Jeannot Barr, who organized the first (and many subsequent) New York Print Fair in 1984. They touch on pricing, buying at auction, fair organization, and a host of other business-of-art topics. They delve into the Ferdinand Roten Gallery (based in Baltimore) and his traveling mini print fairs set up in various schools and universities in...

In s3e16, host Ann Shafer speaks with Hope Saska, chief curator and director of academic engagement at the CU Art Museum, that's the museum at the University of Colorado Boulder. Hope's specialty is in 18th-century British graphic satire and caricature. But like so many curators of works on paper, she can talk to you about Albrecht Dürer through tomorrow. CU Art Museum recently become the reposito...

In s3e15, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with printer Julia D'Amario, who has been the printer at the Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, OR, since 2002. Formerly she printed for Pace Prints in New York from 1989–2008. In between all that, since 2008 she has spent summers printing for Jim Dine in his Walla Walla, WA, studio. In fact, Dine lists...

In Platemark s3e14, host Ann Shafer speaks with James Ehlers, professor and chair of the studio art department at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas. It turns out, Emporia State offers the only BFA in engraving arts in the United States. Platemark listeners will know Ann has a soft spot for intaglio prints with an abiding love of engraving due to her studies of Stanley William Hayter. Wit...

More on reproductive prints, the backbone of the history of prints

In a Platemark first we speak with a previous guest for a special update. Artist Tom Hück agreed to talk to hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig at his Evil Prints studio in Park Hills, Missouri, in August 2022. Hück is releasing his latest print edition on Thanksgiving Day, a rumination on American gluttony called Monkey Mountain Kronikle . Created over a number of years, Monkey Mountain Kronikle is a...

Platemark series two, A History of Western Prints, returns with an episode about reproductive prints. In s2e21, Tru Ludwig takes listeners back to a time when lives were lived with no images save for maybe what one saw in church. Prints were the way the first images were widely consumed; they were that era's internet. A reproductive print is one in which an artist's creation (a drawing, painting,...

In s3e12, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Maureen Warren, curator of European and (North) American art at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For ten years Maureen has been studying, researching, and writing about prints in the Dutch Republic, which was the basis of her dissertation at Northwestern University. At long last, all that hard work has come to...

In s3e11, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with artist LaToya M. Hobbs whose commissioned installation will be on view as visitors enter the IFPDA Print Fair at the end of October 2022. The works will be front and center at the entrance and will no doubt garner lots of attention for LaToya. Speaking with LaToya was a distinct pleasure for Ann because the artist is based in Baltimore, is full-time f...

In s3e10, Platemark hosts Ann Shafer and Ben Levy talk with Julia Samuels, master printer and owner of Overpass Projects, Pawtucket, RI. Ann and Ben were thrilled to visit Overpass in person for the recording of this episode. It's so great to see what guests are talking about and to be able to take photographs of the space, artists, and prints. Julia creates her own work primarily in black-and-whi...