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ENDEGRA
European network for
developmement and education in printmaking
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Workshop 2009 in Mölndal
Everyday Picture Company. An association of 10 artists that run a
lithographic printshop in Mölndal, Sweden. Together they decided
to invite colleagues toa new and fertile network meeting situated in
the workshops at Forsåkersgatan, Mölndal.
- We invited people that we knew from before andthat we knew would be interested to cooperate crossnational.
The result was a gathering of people from Sweden,Finland, Denmark, Russia, Germany, Estonia andLithuania.
Forsåkergatan in Mölndal is a small, narrow street with old
buildings. Right where the street turns into afootpath, you find three
different workshops. SvenrobertLundquist´s and Mona
Niklasson´s intaglio workshop,situated opposite Handpappersbruket
- the paper mill for handmade paper and beside the lithographic
printshop Everyday Picture Company.
This tight, triangular concentration of workshops was the heart of the
first workshop/seminar in The European Network For Education And
Development In Printmaking. The screenprinters, however, took the tram
to central Gothenburg, where Valand Academy of Art at Gothenburg
University opened up their printshops to enthusiastic participants.
For one week in september 2009, the little street,
Forsåkersgatan, became base camp for the participants of this
workshop. The project aimed to develop and deepen prior contacts taken
between graphic artists in Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. The
initiative was taken at Imatra Taidekoulo in Finland where Jim Berggren
(Everyday Picture Company) has been a visiting teacher for a number of
years. Graphic art is an art tradition that has been drained and put
under pressure at higher art educations for quite some time. In order
to develop new possibilities and educate new graphic artists on a
higher level, the graphic printshops that hold
advanced skills and competences amog their members must cooperate to create the conditions needed.
In order for this cooperation to be successful the different printshops
scattered all over Europe must connect and network, using new
techniques but also meet IRL as we did in Mölndal. The network was
thus established under the name of ”European Network For
Education And Development In Printmaking”
When a bunch of graphic artists get together to comment on eachothers
work you will of course also get an exchange of technical innovations
and interesting tricks. Two materials that have become popualar in
Scandinavia are the polymer plate and ImageOn film, both light
sensitive materials to be printed in the intaglio press. Neither one of
these techniques are much used in
the rest of Europe and therefor attracted attention in the workshop. At
Valands school of art intensive work was carried out combining these
new materials with allready known techniques, presenting possibilities
that might mean a lot to future work back home in one´s own
printshop.
Peter Stephan, who is a very skilled printmaker at Grafikwerkstatt in
Dresden had a lot of know how to offer! He is mainly a lithographic
printmaker and showed how to increase printing possibilities by new
ways of using different strength of the developer for light sensetive
plates. You expose and develop the plate as usual. When the plate is
ready to be printed, you start to develop the dark places that lack
details. washes that is too dense can be developed further using
developers from 5% to 50 - 60%. You work the dark areas on the damp
plate
with a brush. This was new to us, and was emidiatelyuseful! Peter also
showed how to use the intaglio press for lithography printing, wich of
course is of interest to those workshops that don´t have a
lithographic press. Kari Holopainen, who wrote a book on photopolymer
together with the danish artist Eli Ponsaing. Holopainen is a
recognized expert on the Polymer technique and he demonstrated his
skills at several occasions during the workshop. He started out as a
photographer and looks at the image with a photographer´s eye;
all shades must
cooperate, from the deepest black to the lightest tint.
While Holopainen worked on this in the intaglio workshop, there was
full activity on both the big offsetpress and the small hand press in
the neighbouring lithographic workshop, Everyday Picture Company. Here
you also find equipment for computer based printmaking.
In the evenings the group working at Valand Art Academy would take the
tram back to Mölndal and join the others for a nice dinner in the
handpaper mill. Mona Niklasson and Ulla Magnusson made these dinner
gettogethers very memorable! Simple but exquisite meals pleased
everyone and opened up for interesting conversations. It showed that
the mundane is the true lifeblood
of an event like this!
This workshop is about the production terms of art. The primary target group for artists
in residency and exchange meetings, are artists from countries that
join the graphic art network. The project stems from and develops
through the expanded European mobility. We now have the possibility to
cooperate with artists in Eastern Europe in ways that were not possible
before. In this new situation you find knowledge and experience from
centuries back that unhesitatingly connects to contemporary digital
possibilities. New cooperations are established between people, methods
and techniques.
On short terms we try to produce a prototype for how an Artist in
Residence arrangement for graphic artists could be administered and
artistically and technically situated. While working on this prototype
we are certain to gain experiences and prerequisites for a future
Artist in Residence system. We hope that this example will inspire
other nodes in the network to initiate similar meetings and
get-togethers. This will, in the long run, allow us to found a good
base for technical and artistic development in graphic art. Beside the
obvious chanses to improve the terms for production in art we also se
how new visual possibilities and physical meetings increase the
communication between people and cultures.
Aside from these important personal contacts through travels and
sojourns, the most important tool for communicating will of course be
the internet.
When discussing the future at this september workshop 2009, several
participating printshops were interested to arrange new meetings. 2010
this event will thus be hosted by Imatra School of Art in Finland. We
look forward to it!
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© 2010 endegra.org
• European network for development and education in
printmaking
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