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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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,…
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…
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 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,…
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…
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…
In s3e16, host Ann Shafer speaks with Hope Saska, chief curator and director of academic engagement at the CU Art Museum, that’s the museum at the University of Colorado Boulder. Hope’s specialty is in 18th-century British graphic satire and caricature. But like so many curators of works on paper, she…
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,…
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…
More on reproductive prints, the backbone of the history of prints
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…