Printmaking Camp

Day 2.

Days 3, 4

Day 5 
Day 6
Coda: The Pull exhibition in Atlanta
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This week I’m at Connecticut College in New London working on a print project developed by Marcia Wood and Tim McDowell. Marcia owns the Atlanta gallery that bears her name, and Tim, one of her artists, is head of the printmaking department here. There are six of us making the prints, all of us represented by the Marcia Wood Gallery: Kim Anno, San Francisco; Kate Javens, New York City; Don Pollack, Chicago; Katherine Taylor, Atlanta; plus Tim, who lives in Noank near the college; and me..

A view of the printmaking studio at Connecticut College, with Clara Euam, printmaking studio assistant, in the foreground. Background from left: Lucas McDowell, Ellen Barnard and Brown Sanders

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We’ve gathered to produce a portfolio of six prints in an edition of 30. I’m excited about the project because I’ve never done anything like this (and neither have most of my colleagues, painters all). Fortunately we have two master printmakers, Tim and his father-in-law, Brown Sanders) and Tim’s studio assistant, Clara Euam. Filmmaker Ellen Barnard is producing a documentary of the project for Tomorrow Films, her Atlanta-based company, with her cameraman, Lucas McDowell. I’ll have links and info as the project progresses.
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The ‘Print Project”—still unnamed but dubbed "Printmaking Camp" by my buddy Nancy Baker in a Facebook conversation-- had its inception a couple of years ago when Tim suggested to Marcia that his print room was available in the summer. "I thought it would be a great opportunity to bring six strong artists together to do their signature work in a new medium and process," says Marcia. So after about a year of planning, we’ve flown, driven, trained and bused our way here.

Day 1Everyone’s working on their plate, or the drawing or transparency for their plate. There's a lot of consulting with Tim and with one another. We're making color swatches and proofing the plates. Take a look:

 Kate Javens with drawings.

Don Pollack with transparencies he made from paintings and photographs. He's the only one of us who arrived with the requisite images; the rest of us scrambled to produce our images when we arrived.

Kim Anno working her transparency over the light table. Her print will be the first to be editioned tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Katherine Taylor worked on this transparency drawing all day, but she was the first to have completed proof, which you'll see tomorow (I'm writing a bit after the fact because I needed to work on my own transparency and plate.).


I made transparencies from a unique digital print, which is an ink-and-paper variation of an image from my series of Silk Road paintings. All of us had to get over the hump of thinking like painters. "You're making prints," said Tim McDowell. I'm still learning how to do that.

Tim and Clara made Tim's edition of 30 before we arrived, because he's spending all of his time this week helping each of us

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Tim consulting with Kate.


Tim consulting with Katherine.


Don and Katherine talking color and image

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Kate and her ram.

Above, Don's color; below, mine
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Those tins of ink are so dense with pigment (milled with a tiny bit of linseed oil) that each weights about four pounds.

Above, Clara preparing paper for Don's proof

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Below, Tim about to place the plate, as Julia Pollack and Brown Sanders look on

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Our culinary schedule for the week--and Tim's advice on how painters should approach printmaking

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You talkina me?