Demo & printing at Rowan University

While on a visit to the US for Philagrafika and the Southern Graphics Council conference, I was delighted to be invited to Rowan University by David Vaccaro, lecturer in printmaking.

Along with Jeremy Leckenbusch, my host and fellow Tamarind Institute graduate, we conducted an afternoon demonstration to the undergraduates on the printmaking program. The artist was student John Mitchell, who allowed us to process and proof his plate. It was thoroughly enjoyable to meet and talk to the students. We did well in keeping the pizza feast away from the press area.

We returned to assisted John in the editioning of the two runs for his print, a pale flat followed by the key. John is continuing with lithography and hopes to attend Tamarind's Summer Workshop next year.


















Photo credit: Joanna Drzaszcz

Ben Jeans Houghton: On Arka: Poster

Mark Dion: Signing edition

Had an interesting and relaxing day in New York, drinking coffee and catching up with friends, Deborah & Jeremy. Then headed to the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery to meet Mark Dion and Robert Williams (University of Cumbria), for Mark to sign his completed edition "Tropical Collectors." After which I was privileged to be introduced to Sarah Suzuki, Assistant Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books at MoMA and to hear Mark discuss the history of his printmaking career to students from the School of Visual Arts.

Photo credit: Jermey Leckenbusch

Ben Jeans Houghton: On Arka

Ben Jean Houghton
'On Arka'
1st ~14th April 2010

Moving Gallery
67b Westgate road, Newcastle city centre
Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Preview- 1st April 2010
Doors 6-8ish

The print is a silent witness. Whether deliberate, as with a constructed print, or involuntary (a fingerprint, the impression left on a pillow in the morning), a print is always the tangible evidence left from a past action, now gone. It seems significant therefore that Ben Jeans Houghton's new edition of prints were germinated by a double absence. First of all, by his discovery of a discarded collection of illustrations (the author absent or gone), and secondly, by the subject matter of these illustrations: cadavers in the Newcastle University morgue (the body without the presence of self).

The atmospheric virtue of this series of prints doesn't just lie in the myth of their origins however, but in their sublime and delicate rendering. The Series begins as a literal, figurative transcription from the found illustrations and original cadavers which Jeans Houghton visited in the Morgue. Then with the idiosyncratic trepidation and wonder of an artist exploring his subject on the edge of discovery, Jeans Houghton's images become increasingly volatile. The recognisable, figurative human elements (simultaneously beautiful and horrible) rupture and destabalize as the images become permeated with the mists of the unknown, and the imaginary.

While the series begins as a witness to real death, these prints do not depict fear or explicit horror but instead they speak of a latent divine, and the corporeal, which exists at the border of ourselves, our imagination, and non-existence.

Copy > Iris Aspinall Priest

Graham Firth: Exhibition at Doncaster Museum & Art Gallery

Graham Firth: Prints
@ Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery (What's on .pdf)
27 March – 23 May 2010
Preview is on Sunday March 28th from 2pm-4pm

"Local printmaker Graham Firth has a humorous and quirky view of the modern world which he expresses through his beautiful hand - made prints. Winner of Doncaster Museum & Art Gallery’s Open Art exhibition in 2007, Graham will be showing a selection of lino cuts, lithographs and working drawings, many of which take as their subject the street life of Doncaster."



Artist page > Graham Firth