Gillian Greenhill Hannum
On a sunny, late February afternoon, I made the hour-long drive north to Washington Depot, CT to see the exhibition “About Printmaking” at the Washington Art Association Gallery. Curated by master printer and artist Anthony Kirk, the show, which ran from January 20 through February 25, was a deep dive into the vast array of techniques used by artists to create fine art prints.
Scottish-born Kirk is well-known to many Print Club members. As master printer at Tyler Graphics, he printed for many of the most well-known artists of the 20th century, including Frank Stella, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Donald Sultan and others. He also served as master printer at CCP. In 2000, he established his own studio in North Salem, NY; artists with whom he works in this capacity can be found on his website, anthonykirkeditions.com. About the exhibition, Kirk shared the following with me:
When asked to curate this exhibition I thought for a moment what will this exhibition be about, and there, in a second, I had the exhibition title, About Printmaking. More than that I wanted the average gallery visitor to leave with a better understanding as to how prints are made. Therefore, the thread that pops up here and there throughout the exhibition is the "making" in the word printmaking.
There is no better example than Picasso's sugar lift aquatints illustrating Buffon's Histoire Naturelle,which is on display, showing Picasso's aquatint of an ostrich. I placed it near Joan Mitchell's aquatint Little Weeds and my premise is that Picasso asked his master printer Roger Lacourière to come up with a painterly process for a brush aquatint. Lacourière then invented the sugar lift aquatint process, which I used in my collaborations with Joan Mitchell.
On view are very complex prints, such as a multimedia print by Frank Stella, to simple monoprints by Lois Borgenicht, who uses supermarket Styrofoam meat trays as a matrix.
The 106 works by 73 artists certainly includes big names—Picasso, Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell, for example. Two prints by the latter are elucidated by including materials demonstrating aspects of the processes. Kirk gives a detailed description of the process involved in creating Trees V – A. This 1992 work combines carborundum aquatint and etched aquatint. Her Little Weeds II, also 1992, is a sugar lift aquatint and is displayed with copper plates showing the process (though not from this print). Kirk provides a brief history describing how Picasso’s printer, Roger Lacourière, came up with the sugar lift technique in order to provide the kind of painterly texture the artist sought. Picasso wanted to be able to “paint” directly on his copper plates and then etch them. Lacourière came up with a solution of sugar dissolved in water that created a syrup. Into this, he mixed black Encre de Chine and some gum Arabic. Picasso applied this to his plates, and, once it was dry, the printer applied a layer of asphaltum. When that had dried, he put the plates into a tray of hot water, which caused the brush marks to dissolve and lift off the plates, taking the covering varnish with it and leaving the artist’s marks exposed as pure copper. An aquatint ground was then applied to the plates and they were etched. The process could be repeated multiple times to get the effect the artist wanted. In the wall label, Kirk calls the sugar lift technique “the most significant intaglio process invented for printmakers in the 20th century.” It was this same process that Kirk used with Joan Mitchell to create Little Weeds II. Kirk had learned sugar lift at the Winchester School of Art in the U.K.; his professor, Norman Ackroyd, had learned the formula from Lacourière’s daughter, who used to mix it up each day for her father and Picasso.
This sort of technical information provides new insights into the printmaking process, allowing viewers to better understand how various types of effects are achieved. Indeed, the show was filled with plates, blocks, stones and various printmakers’ tools like rollers, etching needles and burins. There was a collagraph with its plate by Catarina Cohelo, a woodcut and a linocut by Florence Neal with their respective blocks, and a lithograph by Carolyn Muskat shown next to its stone.
Former PCNY Showcase and Presentation Print artists were well represented. I was greeted, upon entering, by Fenway V (2017), an etching and aquatint by John Walker (2003 Presentation Print artist), available for $3,700. Nearby was 08:46, a linocut by David Barthold (2018 Showcase) that is a memorial tribute to George Floyd, already sold at $700 unframed. Nina Jordan (2016 Showcase) was represented by Tree Eats Tampa Trailer, a 2023 reduction woodcut shown as two prints and the block; the available print was sold with pricing at $500 unframed and $650 framed. Also by Jordan was Flooded Home – Early Evening (2023), with one sold at $700 unframed. Betty Ball (2020/21 Showcase) was represented by a photopolymer intaglio, Ranunculus, which was available for $850, and several monotypes, Knee High by 4th of July 3 (2022) and Heartland August No. 1 (2023), both small landscapes of farm scenes available for $365 each. Nancy Lasar (2002 Showcase) had a trace monotype, Warhola (2008), which was selling for $1,800.
April Vollmer, who has presented programs on Japanese woodblock technique to our club, was represented by Twice as Busy (2005), a Mokuhanga woodcut, that was selling for $700 framed/$500 unframed. A block from her Keeping Busy was displayed beneath.
PCNY member and 2008 Showcase artist Jane Cooper had two pieces in the exhibition. Stardust (2020) is a cyanotype with 22k gold leaf and chine collé, available for $420 framed; Muir, a unique carborundum print and silk aquatint monoprint with chine appliqué, was selling for $1,150 and was shown with its plate. Kiki Smith (2021 Presentation Print artist) had a series of small prints, Bathing I, II, III, IV and V; the suite of five was available for $3,750 unframed; individual prints were $900 unframed.
Other prints that caught my eye included Anthony Kirk’s own Stilled Lives (2012), an engraving and aquatint of child’s letter blocks, available for $1,500, Frances Ashforth’s beautiful monotype Blue Cloud (2020), selling for $2,800, and Renee Magnanti’s Italian Needle Lace Pattern with Grandmother’s Lace (2017), a drypoint with paper yarn weaving, lace, encaustic and watercolor, available for $2,100. There were also interesting prints by Robert Kipniss, Mary Prince, Katia Santibañez, Malcolm Moran, Melissa Meyer and Lothar Osterburg. Kate Hanlon was represented by a traditional white line woodcut, The Laundress (2023), shown with its block and available for $1,200. Carolyn Letvin’s 2008 plein air monotype, Still Waters #1, was displayed with the palm press roller used by the artist in her work; this piece had sold at $600.
In addition to its encyclopedic investigation of printmaking techniques, “About Printmaking” also explored the range of subject matter treated by printmakers. As Kirk explains, the show included “the time-honored subject matter in prints that has been the source material for printmakers since the Old Masters, such as the portrait, the landscape and the still life.” He also notes that “prints have also been used politically as a vehicle of protest and to focus concerns on contemporary social issues.”
In this regard I included Nina Jordan's prints about changing climate—specifically the frequency of flooding and tornadoes as in her reduction woodcuts Flooded Home-Early Evening and Tree Eats Tampa Trailer; David Barthold's print on racism, America's original sin; forest fires as depicted in Susan Goldberg's reduction woodcut, Bobcat Fire; endangered species of insects as in Holly Downing's mezzotint Vanishing Gems I, and gun violence as in my print Stilled Lives and Margaret Roleke's collagraph Two, assembled from spent shot gun cartridges.
Kirk shared that one visitor to the exhibition commented that the show provided “a visual tutorial of printmaking.” I certainly learned a great deal by discovering more about the various processes behind the prints on display. The curator is to be congratulated for mounting such a visually rich and interesting exhibit, one that was a feast both for the eyes and the mind.