Platemark Episodes

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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....

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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),...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Curator Hope Saska (University of Colorado at Boulder Art Museum) talks with Platemark host Ann Shafer about taking in a print publisher's archive.