Platemark Episodes

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 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 person. Fun fact: Käthe Kollwitz is Tru's patronus. Another fun fact, Käthe is pronounced Kay-tuh. Tru's website: thepurplecrayonpress.com.

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 art. Since her retirement in 2010, Ruth has been working on exhibition and writing projects, as well as sitting on the boards of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and others. As we are releasing this episode, Ruth h...

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 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 have on their shelves. At nearly 1,000 pages, the book offers up more than 800 illustrations and covers print history from Gutenberg through the early 1980s. It also includes incredibly thorough notes, bibliography, glossary, and index. It is indisp...

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 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 unparalleled pathos and intricacy using a single spiraling line. In this episode, Tru and Ann talk about thi...

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 favorite prints here. A beloved educator, Steve has inspired generations of students with his engaging a...

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 that one might think impossible to capture in engraving. Sir Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641). Se...

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, raises funds, organizes programming, and curates exhibitions. Managing human resources and staffing, ...

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 artists in the history of prints using them to spread news far and wide about societal ills through visual ...

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 affordable, wonderful prints are selected by Laura who always has time to talk shop with artist, bu...

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. This is a first half of a longer conversation. Stay tuned for part two. Episode image: [DETAIL] Jacque...

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 Diebenkorn. In 1996, she started publishing prints as Paulson Press. She and Renée Bott joined forces as P...

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 Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club, which traveled to the Chrysler Museum, the New Orleans Mu...

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 again, for clarity, a reproductive print is one in which an artist creates a design (a drawing, pain...

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 see this exhibition and interview curator Elizabeth Wyckoff (s3e7), artist Tom Huck (s3e4 and s3e13),...

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 Hillsmith, Hugh Mesibov, Angelo Pinto, Anne Ryan, Louis Schanker, Karl Schrag, Judith Shahn, Ben Sha...

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 customary to acknowledge all the artists in the strip of lettering at the bottom of the print (called the ...

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 the second half of the twentieth century. They also touch upon the Associated American Artists, whos...

Curator, University of Colorado at Boulder Art Museum

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 Julia among his favorite printers—and he has worked with many, many printers across the world. If th...