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An Australian Abroad

Subject: [PrintAustralia] What I did on my trip by Anthea Boesenberg
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 20:49:01 +1100
From: Anthea Boesenberg <boes@ar.com.au>
Reply-To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com
To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com

Hello everyone, I'm home again after a wonderful time in North America!

I started in Quebec City, where I took part in the opening of Printmaking Month. Yes, that's right, in Quebec there is a whole month devoted to printmaking - exhibitions, conferences, demonstrations etc. etc.- though I think this is the first year they've done it.

I was invited to talk at a seminar on Contemporary Printmaking, together with artists from Belgium, Brazil, Canada and Germany. I understand I will eventually get a copy of the texts presented, and if so, I'll share the information with the list. I showed slides of some contemporary Australian work which crossed the boundaries between print and other media, and I argued that there is a process of fusion between artforms taking place which makes the traditional definitions obsolete.

We stayed in the old city, which was very beautiful, but I became sick and had to stay in bed while the others explored the city. (Rats!) Greta, who travelled with me, spent the next day exploring galleries, and she felt there was a real strength to the local printmaking which was lacking in the paintings she saw.

"Organic" Anthea Boesenberg

Have a look at http://www.meduse.org/engramme. Its probably helpful if you understand French. Engramme has residencies and invites submissions for exhibitions in their gallery.

Then on to Montreal. Here I met PA members Julianna Joos and Claude Villeneuve. I'd been emailing Claude for a couple of years, and had never met her. How wonderful to meet at last and find she was just as I expected to find her! I had met Julianna when she came to Sydney. They are both lovely people, and they were very hospitable. Julianna offered for Greta to stay with her. She showed us the Studio where she works,
Studio Graff. http://www.graff.ca This is a pleasant and well equipped studio with a gallery downstairs. I gave a demonstration of photopolymer printmaking there.

I attended the opening of Miniare at Notre Dame de Grace Cultural Centre. The Quebec Printmaking Council had framed all the works, and hung them with up to three works by the same artist together. The Australian works, which I had collected were also hung together. There was quite a crowd. Dianne Longley, one of the Australian artists, had won a prize, and I was able to thank the President of the Conseil on her behalf.

""Second Edition of MINIARE" - The Montreal International Miniature Print Biennial
The Conseil quebecois de l’estampe (Quebec Printmakers Council) is launching its second international Miniature biennial. It is open to all professional printmakers from all countries. All printmaking techniques including monotypes and digital prints are accepted. The maximum paper size is 18 x 18 cm and image size may be the same or smaller that the paper size. Deadline for submitting work: May 1st 2002. The exhibit will take place in Montreal from October 11 to November 17, 2002. A jury will award three cash prizes. A full colour catalogue will be published and all selected artists will receive a copy .

For this second edition, the Conseil has decided to showcase Australian Printmaking. Anthea Boesenberg is coordinating this Australian contribution...

Welcome to all and good luck! Claude Aimée Villeneuve, President, Quebec Printmakers Council. "

The opening of Miniare at Notre Dame de Grace Cultural Centre

I also went to Atelier Circulaire
http://www.colba.net/~atelcirc/athoma.htm

This is a very large studio in Montreal with a very impressive range of presses and equipment. There was an exhibition of large format works and Julianna had won first prize for her piece. The works were simply pinned to the wall.

All Quebec artists are required to deposit one print from each edition in the National Library of Quebec, and sometimes the library will pay for others. (At least, that's how I understand it works.) This way, the state builds up a collection of works on paper, while at the same time supporting its artists in a very direct way. The same thing happens with artist's books.

There was a Biennale in progress, and the emphasis was on drawing. We were particularly impressed with the work of Betty Goodwin, a Montreal artist who works on large sheets of mylar. Her works deal with the body.

We went to the Contemporary Art gallery and saw the photographic work of Sam Taylor Wood which prompted considerable discussion between us.

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'What are you wearing under that?' Gerald Sowarka

Subject:[PrintAustralia] What I did (part 2)
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 14:02:55 +1100
From: Anthea Boesenberg <boes@ar.com.au>
Reply-To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com
To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com

We left Montreal to fly to Vancouver on the west coast of Canada, and then on to Victoria on Vancouver Island.

Graham and Marnie met us at the airport. They live in a very beautiful part of the world - water, mountains, pine trees - very, very different to anywhere I'd ever been before. What struck us both immediately was the pine scented air, very clear, almost crystalline. (When we returned to Oz we could immediately smell the scent of eucalypts and bushfires.)

And Graham and Marnie were very welcoming. We stayed in their house with them and the workshop took place in Graham's studio, which is very large, though of course, not set up for intaglio work, since he is a woodblock artist.

Graham had improvised an exposure system, and workshop participants brought three small intaglio presses. We met PA members Charles Morgan, and Paul, and new member (?) Jen. (Great to put faces to names!) This was the first workshop given in Graham's studio by someone other than himself, and some of the students he had not met before. Some people had come from some distance away on the island.

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Greta, Graham and Anthea

Over two days, we learnt the basic process of making intaglio photopolymer plates, including exposure to a screen to achieve a range of tones, drawing directly on the plate, drawing on films of various kinds, and some inking techniques. We did some exposures in the sun as well (10 minutes I think.) None of the students were familiar with polymer plate, though Paul had used ImagOn, and we talked about the similarities and differences between the two. Two days was not long enough really to go into fine tuning the exposure to suit your artwork and other refinements of the process, including making relief plates and multiple plates, and using a variety of different plates to suit what you want from an image. I'm sure they will explore these on their own.

It was great fun, and hard work at the same time! After class finished, we went out to dinner with Graham and Marnie and Charles and Jen and had a wonderful time.

On our last day on Vancouver Island, Graham and Marnie took us for a drive around the beauty spots of the island, and in to Victoria for a look around. We saw salmon spawning in the river, very old and amazingly tall trees, and Victoria harbour. No wonder the area is a tourist centre.

The next day, we had to get out of bed at 5.30 in order to catch the ferry to Vancouver for our trip South. Poor Graham and Marnie - I hope they went back to bed after they had driven us to the ferry terminal!

The ferry trip was magical. Pine clad hills emerged out of the mist as the sun rose over the water. There are many islands in the passage between Victoria and Vancouver, some of them little more than a rocky outcrop, others larger. We saw otter and sea birds. Despite the cold, we clung to the railings and just looked. Next stop Portland, Oregon.

"Transparent Threads" Sandra Williams

Some relevant sites to visit:

Graham's Studio:
http://www.woodblock.info

The Canadian artists front represents Canadian professional artists,
and promotes the arts in Canada
http://www.carfac.ca/english/eng_home.html

Try http://visit-vancouverisland.com/ for some photographs of the area.

Subject: [PrintAustralia] Part 3
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 07:58:52 +1100
From: Anthea Boesenberg <boes@ar.com.au>
Reply-To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com
To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com

I'd been invited to do a workshop at Portland, Oregon, for the North West Print Council, and at the same time, one of my reasons for travelling to the US was to take an exhibition of prints from Australian printmakers based in the Sydney region for exhibition in the gallery of the North West Print Council. (The exhibition was called Print Australia , though it had nothing to do with our group, except that the invitation had come from a contact I had made through Print Australia many months before.) See some of the works:
http://myportland.pdxguide.com/323/3f28dc16/PhotoAlbum.wsi

(The prints on this page are from this exhibition.)

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Greta, Barbara and Anthea

I am showing NWPC work in Sydney in exchange. More news of this when it goes up next year.

In my last report I spoke of the magical ferry ride to Vancouver: those feelings of wonder were soon to evaporate! We had a long, exhausting, and in some ways hilarious Greyhound bus ride to Portland, arriving to find that Barbara Mason had waited in the cold at the bus stop for us to arrive despite the bus being two hours late. A trip of 9 hours had taken 11. We consoled ourselves that we had learned a great deal about the life and attitudes of our bus driver, who had talked non stop for about 8 of the eleven hours. (Greta thinks its a book, but I see it as a film....)

Barbara and Lee very generously put us up at their house. Barbara has a well equipped studio of her own, with exposure unit and press, and a lot more besides! She is very interested in art in education, and gives a great deal of time and energy to teaching monotype and other media, especially print media, in schools. She seems absolutely indefatigable!

The workshop was to be at Marylhurst University, a private campus in Portland. The printroom was large and airy with a press of a kind I hadn't seen in Australia. It was both top and bottom driven, and you could choose either mode depending on whether you were doing relief or intaglio plates. (That is, either the bed moved - bottom drive- or the roller drove the bed - top drive) Apparently Barbara preferred to use the press as a top driven one, but I chose to use it as a bottom driven press because that's what I am familiar with

Marylhurst had a small exposure unit with a light integrator and vacuum frame, but no protection from UV light for the eyes. We bought a piece of block out curtaining from a fabric store and draped it over the unit so that we couldn't see the light when the unit was operating. Other than that, it was pleasing to see that the printroom was run with a concern for safety - no nitric acid, oil cleanup, alternative solvents etc.
http://www.marylhurst.edu

Marylhurst

All the students were experienced printmakers, and some had used polymer plates before. The work produced was very exciting. They particularly responded to working directly on the plate. The print technician, who did the workshop, suggested we use photographic contact frames for our exposures in the sun. They work very well because not only are they braced around the edges, but they are also braced at the middle, ensuring excellent contact between plate and artwork. Since I got back, I've bought a new one of these for myself, but they should also be available second hand from photographic supply stores. Contact is almost as good as in a vacuum frame.

I also used a wet media film called Duralar which was great for tusche washes and pen drawing, but it isn't available in Australia. One student had great success in the workshop by sanding a piece of clear film lightly so that the media stuck to the surface.

Portland is a medium sized city, and most of the galleries are in what is called the Pearl district. They are reasonably close together, so they have banded together to have their openings on the 1st Thursday of the month http://www.firstthursday.org so that people can walk from one gallery to another and see a variety of artwork. There is also a gallery guide, called 1st Thursday which is published monthly.

There seems to be a lively artscene in Portland, with some challenging contemporary work presented. Print work is well represented, in part because the late Gordon Gilkey, a printmaker himself, left a legacy to create a print room at the Portland Art Museum which houses his private collection. Further print and photographic work has been added since his death. I saw a fine exhibition of Mexican prints when I was there.

The rooms of the NWPC are in the building which houses the Portland Art Museum, but they have recently leased new space in the Pearl District, which will give them a larger exhibition space, offices, and room for a small studio. The NWPC publishes a newsletter, and houses a collection of prints by its members itself. Given a day or two's notice than can select prints from their archives for a show anywhere. The work is mounted and matted, and bears a disclosure form showing medium, edition number, type of paper , whether the plate has been cancelled, etc, etc. Apparently the disclosure form is mandatory under Oregon law.

"Wounded" Josephine Severn

The North West Print Council covers a large geographical area, including British Columbia and Alaska, and Graham Scholes is a member. In fact while I was there I saw a piece of Graham's work which had been put aside for a purchaser to pick up. NWPC's website is http://www.northwestprintcouncil.org/contact.htm

The last part of my odyssey will follow soon......... Anthea

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Subject: [PrintAustralia] Last part............
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 2002 13:53:40 +1100
From: Anthea Boesenberg <boes@ar.com.au>
Reply-To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com
To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com

So, we travelled on to Bend in Oregon. Bend is high desert country, that is, it is situated on a plateau between two mountain ranges. The rain clouds climb up to drop their rain (or snow) on the slopes of one mountain range, float over the plateau, and then drop a second lot of precipitation when they rise again to climb the second range of mountains. They often miss Bend altogether.

For Australians, this was quite disconcerting. There were clear skies and sunshine, we were in a warm house, and yet if you ventured outside it was so cold you needed a thick jacket, hat and warm gloves! The jacket I had brought from Australia was quite inadequate. They had their coldest November day in a century when we were there. The temperature fell to -17 Celcius. It did snow, much to our delight, while all the locals grumbled about the terrible weather. I had thought that the snow must melt sometime, and provide water for the plants, but it is so cold that the snow sits on the ground for days, in bright sunshine, and when it finally disappears, it is because it has evaporated rather than melted. Because of the low rainfall, Central Oregon is not clothed in thick forest as other parts of Oregon are. At the same time, an icy river runs through the city, and its meanders give Bend its name. The river rises in the mountains, and even in summer when the air temperature might be 30+ degrees celcius, the water is freezing cold.

Bend is a small city of about 55,000 people, mainly catering to the tourist trade and as a centre for the lumber industry. See http://www.ohwy.com/or/b/bend.htm It offers accommodation and transport to the snowfields for skiers. It has about 16 art galleries of different kinds. There is an Art Education centre called the Art Station (Its in an old railway station building) which was set up in a cooperative venture between the civic authorities, Central Oregon Arts and a developer.
http://www.centraloregonarts.com/ArtStation/artstation.home.htm There's a monthly Arts and Entertainment publication. There are music, writer's and crafts festivals every year in Central Oregon. So, there seems to be a healthy cultural life.

It is an expensive place to live in, and most of the residents are relatively well-to-do. Greta and I went to exercise at the Athletics Club. As we were getting changed and chatting, people recognised our Aussie accents. A woman, a complete stranger, offered to take us in her plane to see the Crater Lakes! People in the steam room realised we were the visiting Australian artists, and asked if they could come to our exhibition opening.

Our exhibition was at Steve and Sandra Millers Sunbird Gallery.
http://www.sunbirdartgallery.com. Because Bend has so many art galleries, there is an Artwalk on the first Friday of every month, and there was a very large crowd - our steam room acquaintances turned up with the old line "I didn't recognise you with your clothes on..." I was very pleased to have an opportunity to exhibit my 'Emergency Sky for Chicken Little', because its quite large. We had a wonderful time - there was good Australian wine, great food and lots of people!

"Emergency Sky for Chicken Little"

We gave a talk on Australian printmaking at the Art Station, and then on Sunday morning, demonstrated photopolymer plate to a large crowd, not all printmakers, who turned out at very short notice - wouldn't happen in Oz! Art Station has a press, much underused, but some of the artists who saw the demonstration have contacted me afterwards to say they are following up on the technique, so that may change.

A couple of days later we flew home. It had been an amazing experience. Many, many people had been extraordinarily generous and hospitable over the five weeks. We received invitations to do future workshops in Montreal, Trois Rivieres, Quebec, New York, Mexico.......opportunities to explore at some time in the future! I arrived home to find my proposal for a solo show at Linden in Melbourne had been accepted. Must get back to work.

The planning for the trip was done by email, mostly through contacts I had made on Print Australia. I had never actually met many of the people who helped organise the workshops. I'd like to thank Josephine for making it all possible, and Julianna Joos, Claude Aimee Villeneuve, Nicole Malenfant, Graham and Marnie Scholes in Canada, and Barbara and Lee Mason, Sandra and Steve Miller in the US. And I'd like to send hugs to all those great people who took part in the workshops........

Anthea

Subject: [PrintAustralia] Exhibition
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 18:02:30 +1100
From: Anthea Boesenberg <boes@ar.com.au>
Reply-To: PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com
To: <PrintAustralia@yahoogroups.com>

There will be an exhibition of work from The North West Print Council at the
University of Wollongong's Long Gallery, in the Faculty of Creative Arts,
17th February 2003 to 30 March 2003.

The work is a representative selection and there are many striking images in
a variety of printmaking techniques. The show is mounted in exchange for the
exhibition of Australian work I took to the U.S. last year. (I carried much
of it back to Australia in my suitcase. Who needs clothes?)

Anthea

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