Artist Episodes

In this episode of Platemark, host Ann Shafer talks with renowned printmaker Jenny Robinson who recently opened up her eponymous print shop in Sydney, Australia. Jenny shares her experiences moving from America to Slovenia during the Trump era, integrating into Slovenia's printmaking community, and ultimately relocating to Sydney, Australia, to establish her print atelier. We talk about the challenges of getting different materials and the cultural contrasts in the art scenes of America, Europe...

In this five-part mini-series, Ann is talking to five artists who were selected to be included in an exhibition called 5X5, that was part of Print Austin's winter festival this year in 2024. The juror of the show is Mysczka Lewis, who is a curator at Tandem Press. Next up is Teresa Cole, an artist and printmaker from New Orleans. She has taught at Tulane University for nearly thirty years. Teresa’s interest in the humanness of pattern has been a throughline in her work and she incorporates diff...

Wondering how far you can take chine collé in a project? Listen in as Annalise Gratovich tells us all about this method of adding thin pieces of hand-dyed papers to giant woodcuts. In s3e61 of Platemark, podcast host Ann Shafer continues talking to artists included in Print Austin’s 5x5 exhibition, juried by Myzska Lewis, a curator at Tandem Press. Next up is artist Annalise Gratovich. Annalise works in woodcut primarily (and etching), and is best known for her monumental woodcuts with multiple...

In s3e59, Platemark host Ann Shafer sits down with David Avery to talk shop. David is an etcher, who restrains his work in both size and palette, but manages to tackle big topics. His social commentary is stinging and remarkable in that it comes in such a small package. These etchings pack a punch. Ann and David talk about absurdist literature, standing on the shoulders of giants (Dürer, Max Klinger, Della Bella), how prescient Goltzius’s Disgracers are, and how we could never have imagined the...

In s3e59, Platemark host Ann Shafer continues talking to artists included in Print Austin’s 5x5 exhibition, juried by Myzska Lewis, a curator at Tandem Press. Second up is Anna Trojanowska, an artist and lithographer from Wroclaw, Poland. Anna creates collages made from lithographs, which she creates on a single marble slab in her garage studio. The works included in 5x5 seek to give the feeling of echolalia, a form of autism in which words and phrases are repeated over and over. That repetition...

In s3e57, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Karen Kunc, an artist who manipulates reduction woodcuts in an amazing and unique way. Karen is a retired professor from the University of Nebraska, and is owner of Constellation Studios in downtown Lincoln. At the studio, which opened ten years ago, Karen offers workshops, curates exhibitions, and makes her own work. The studio includes equipment for papermaking, book arts, letterpress, and other means of creating prints. Karen’s work includes rel...

In s3e56, Platemark host Ann Shafer introduces a five-part miniseries with the artists in 5X5, an exhibition that was part of PrintAustin 2024. First up is Briar Craig, one of five artists selected for inclusion in 5X5 by juror J. Myszka Lewis, curator at Tandem Press, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Briar is an artist and professor at University of British Columbia, Kelowna. He primarily works in screenprint, using found text and surprising juxtapositions. Ann and Briar talk about words and th...

In s3e55, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Miguel A. Aragón, artist and professor at the City University of New York, Staten Island. They talk about CNC routers, drills as woodcutting tools, growing up in Juarez, Mexico, and that city’s war on drugs as a subject in his art. He weaves a tight conceptual circle in prints that explore violence, death, perception, and memory in surprisingly subtle works. Miguel A. Aragón (Mexican, born 1978). Espectadores (Spectators), from the series Meoria F...

In s3e54, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with Andrew Raftery, artist, professor, scholar, and wallpaper designer. Andrew works in several modes, most notably in engraving. The through line in the work is domesticity. An early print featured a young man suit shopping. Next was a portfolio of engravings detailing rooms during a real estate open house. Then engravings representing each month in the life of a garden were transferred to twelve dinnerplates and sold as a set. His latest show included...

In s3e53 of Platemark, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig conclude their conversation with Carol Wax, artist and author of The Mezzotint: History and Technique. Carol recently published the second edition of The Mezzotint, expanding greatly in every area from the 1990 first edition. As she tells us, there is a better break down of rocking the copper plates, and of inking and printing them, plus there are new chapters about printing papers and the history of the medium and how it fits in the greater...

In s3e52 of Platemark, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig talk with Carol Wax, artist and author of The Mezzotint: History and Technique. Carol recently published the second edition of The Mezzotint, expanding greatly in every area from the 1990 first edition. As she tells us, there is a better break down of rocking the copper plates, and of inking and printing them, plus there are new chapters about printing papers and the history of the medium and how it fits in the greater history of prints. Th...

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 simultaneously the most simple and direct of techniques while being the most difficult. They talk about ...

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 Bob's hometown, Austin, TX. In the episode, Bob and Ann talk about all sorts of things including anxiety, A...

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 are sometimes difficult, (TRIGGER WARNING) and the conversation touched on some topics that may be d...

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 addition to the MAPC conference, Ann was eager to speak with Jason about his research into electrol...

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 results are luminous photographs printed with printer’s ink. It's a result that cannot be achieved in any ...

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 Hokusai's Great Wave. It allows artists to work with water-based inks (more environmentally friendly) on...

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 World War. Episode image: Ann Gaby-Trotz. Emma Nishimura (Canadian, born 1982). Blending In, 2008. P...

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 illustrated a children's book called You Gotta Meet Mr. Pierce! and she is currently on a book tour. Th...

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 artist’s imagination, workers trapped in a farcical dystopian future is something to which we can all ...

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. With so few artists working in engraving these days, the chance to speak with the professor of that dis...

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 large-scale, double-sided woodcut triptych that opens and closes like a traditional altarpiece. It s...

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 faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and recently had a monumental, five-part, carved wo...

In s3e9 of Platemark, host Ann Shafer talks with James Siena and Katia Santibañez. Both artists, who are married to each other, are painters and printmakers who split their time between New York City and Otis, MA. In the past few years, they have collaborated on four reduction woodcuts with Shore Publishing. An exhibition of the full sets of working proofs for these collaborations were recently on view at Shore Publishing's sister gallery, Cheymore Gallery. Their work complements each other’s an...