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Illinois State University professor Jim Butler consults with student Jennie Jacobson in a work area shared by printmaking classes and a professional print shop called Normal Editions Workshop. Butler helped start NEW, which celebrates 30 years of projects. (Pantagraph/LORI ANN COOK)		ISU student Joan Smits works on a color monotype in the lithography shop. Students share the room with great artists, and they aren't made to feel second-rate in the process, say faculty from the printmaking programming. (Pantagraph/LORI ANN COOK)		New Editions Workshop master printer Veda Rives discusses production of "Mother & Child" with visiting artist Harold Boyd in this 2006 photograph. (For The Pantagraph)

ISU studio, artists team to produce ageless copies

By Steve Arney
sarney@pantagraph.com


International artist Arturo Herrera was preparing for a stay as a visiting artist at the printmaking program at Illinois State University.

It was 1998, and as ISU's Richard Finch recalls, Herrera was on the telephone wondering whether he could somehow incorporate computer images into lithographs.

"I said, 'Sure. Absolutely, we can do that.'"

"We hung up. I immediately looked to Veda (Rives) and said, 'What do we know about digital imaging?' "

The printmaking machines used by Normal Editions Workshop (NEW) at ISU still are cranked by hand, but the printmakers incorporate new methods in lithography and intaglio printmaking. Herrera's "Brother Rabbit" in 1999 became the first example here of digital images used in a lithograph. It's a common practice now.

This is a studio where they don't like to say "can't." ISU distinguished professor Jim Butler, along with a handful of others, started the not-for-profit workshop 31 years ago; the first print was produced the next year.

From the inception, Butler said, the workshop had a mission to research and explore and a mission to make students, faculty and outside visiting artists full collaborators on projects. The master printmakers figure out how-to rather than limit themselves.

NEW was set up -- and it delivered -- as a national treasure uncommon to university art departments, Butler added.

Normal Editions Workshop, celebrating 30 years of artist projects with a series of events, is part of ISU, but its role is collaborative. It is an affiliate of the art department. Its two staff professionals, director Finch and Assistant Director Rives, teach in classrooms and through an internship program. ISU has them on salary.

The equipment used by NEW largely is the same used in two lab rooms by students and other teachers.

Butler, Finch, Rives and Sarah Smelser teach printmaking. All four create their own work, but their jobs put them in an uncommon role of spending large spans of time helping other artists produce work.

"There are some artists who can't comprehend what we've done here," said Finch. "I get great gratification from collaborating. At the end, we've created something new."

Finch was a student of Butler's at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, where the school used grant money to set up a print shop. Butler came to ISU specifically to create a similar effort. Finch arrived at ISU in 1977, one year after Butler, as the Normal Editions Workshop's second director.

This 30th anniversary celebration of projects amounts to a blowout, with exhibits at five Bloomington-Normal venues. It is one that, like printmaking, offers a sort of running commentary on democracy and access in art. Consider:

• How special it is to have the only copy of an art piece. It speaks to you, and it becomes part of your space. With prints, 20 people or 100 people and galleries can have what is, by and large, an original. Because there are many copies, prints cost a fraction of what a painting by the same artist would cost.

• For the celebration, the Normal Editions Workshop put Illinois Arts Council grant money toward its conference to keep costs low for those attending. The exhibits are public and, at most, cost as little as visitors decide to donate. The retrospective book at 186 pages, containing exceptional reproduction, is priced at $48.50, tax included, for hard cover ($32.50 for soft cover).

The exhibits present a retrospective from 222 limited edition print projects, made with 107 professional artists, plus work of ISU faculty and students.

Butler said NEW always values student contributions. Rives added that, with each artist and each project, the students are exposed to new insight into approach and style. "They are learning about how to think about the creative process."

The professionals, too, are changed in the process. Many visiting artists are accustomed to solitary works, in painting or sculpture perhaps.

In the anniversary book, artist John Fraser writes about the profoundly different experience he had at NEW.

Fraser writes, "I work in relative solitude, so being given the opportunity to work in collaboration with such skilled technician-artists was a special, NO rare, moment in my evolution. ... (M)y NEW experience afforded the time to immerse myself in a collaborative project that assisted me in finding a new perspective."
 

Celebrating 30 years- Frontiers in Printmaking

Oct. 3, 4 and 5, Center for the Visual Arts, Illinois State University (with some events occurring elsewhere). Speakers, panels, demonstrations and exhibits of printmaking in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Normal Editions Workshop, a component of the art department at ISU. Cost: $230 ($120 for students) for three days; $75 for one day.

Reservations and details at www.cfa.ilstu.edu/normal_editions

Prints exhibitions

These are exhibitions produced in connection with the Frontiers in Printmaking conference and the 30th anniversary of the Normal Editions Workshop.


McLean County Arts Center

601 N. East St., downtown Bloomington, through Oct. 13. Reception: 5 to 7 p.m. Oct. 5

• A Progressive Proof: Illinois State University Printmaking Alumni Exhibition. New works by 36 artists who are ISU printmaking alumni.

• NEW Territory: Landscape-Inspired Prints from Normal Editions Workshop. Selected works from Normal Editions Workshop by nine artists whose imagery is inspired by or incorporates elements of landscape.

• Two Suites of Four: Illinois State University Faculty Artists, Past and Present. Selected publications from Normal Editions Workshop by eight artists who are current or former art faculty members from Illinois State University.

University Galleries

Center for the Visual Arts, Illinois State University, through Oct. 28. Reception: 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 25.

• Marks from the matrix -- Normal Editions Workshop; Collaborative Limited Edition Prints 1976-2006. Approximately 80 contemporary prints published since 1976 by a variety of artists selected from the Normal Editions Workshop archive.

• Border Crossings Portfolio Exchange. Portfolio exchange and exhibition featuring artists from the U.S., Canada, Japan, Thailand, Mexico, and South Africa. New works by 22 artists interpreting the theme of borders, contemporary culture and technology issues.

• Illinois State University Printmaking Faculty: Five Decades. Recent works by 14 artists who are current, emeritus and former faculty members of the printmaking area.

BroMenn Regional Medical Center

Hospital atrium, 1304 Franklin Ave., Normal, through Oct. 31.

• Successors: Illinois State University Printmaking Alumni Portfolio Exhibition. Prints by 30 alumni.

Milner Library

Illinois State University, through Oct. 31.

• Selected prints from the International Child Art Collection. Works from Milner-based collection.

Transpace Gallery

107 North St., uptown Normal, Sept. 27-Oct. 27.

• Records: Marks and Meaning. New works by ISU graduate students in printmaking.

 

Two techniques used for lasting impression


By Steve Arney | sarney@pantagraph.com

In approaching the topic of fine art printmaking, the reader should first remove any link between printmaking and the art posters sold in general merchandise stores.

The mass-produced pieces at the store, while often are called art prints, are best termed "reproductions." They essentially are photographs of art.

In fine art shops, such as the Normal Editions Workshop, the artist typically creates a new work exclusively for the creation of prints. Ageless techniques are at work in making multiple impressions of this creation.

The Normal Editions Workshop is part of Illinois State University's printmaking program, located in the Center for the Visual Arts. There are two printmaking classroom studios, a studio each for the lithography and intaglio areas.

• Lithography. Lithography was invented in 1798 by Alois Senefelder. It uses the chemical fact that grease and water don't mix. A grease-based drawing tool often is used by the artist to draw directly onto a perfectly flat piece of limestone. (An aluminum plate sometimes is used and the technique for image creation varies.) A solution of gum arabic and nitric acid is placed atop the image and buffed down to a tight film. Water is applied later to the printing element. A greasy ink is then rolled on the image. The moist gum pushes the ink away from areas that should remain blank, so only the original artist's drawing accepts the greasy ink. Paper is placed atop the surface. A scraper bar passes over the image and the paper, transferring the inked image onto the paper.

• Intaglio. Pronounced with the "G" silent, intaglio refers to a number of processes that date as an art medium to the 1400s. Etching is an example. In intaglio printing, images are incised or etched into metal plates. Zinc and copper plates commonly are used. An artist will use an etching tool to lightly draw through an acid-resistant material applied to the metal plate. The plate is then bathed in acid to eat into the metal at those exposed areas, creating an image beneath the surface of the plate. Ink is put onto the plate and then the plate is wiped off so that the ink remains only at the incised points. Pressure from a roller is used to transfer the inked image onto paper.

Richard Finch contributed to this story.