Photogravure Learn the art of photopolymer gravure printing in this one-day workshop! Using light-sensitive steel-backed Solarplates, participants will create 4 x 5 gravure etching prints from their photographs. This environmentally friendly process translates photographic detail into ink on paper with unparalleled beauty.
No prior experience with printmaking is required. All necessary aspects of printmaking will be discussed including choosing inks, papers, and wiping material. Wiping and inking techniques will be covered. Be prepared to marvel at the way your photograph is transformed through ink on paper!
The making of digital positives will be discussed, but for the workshop itself, please send one color or black and white image file (300 dpi at 10” on the long side) to be made into a digital positive prior to the workshop. An email with details will be provided once you are registered.
All materials for this workshop are included in the registration fee.
Here is a brief outline of the process that will be presented in this workshop:
Starting with your digital photograph, a 4 x 5 transparency positive will be made
The positive is then laid on top of the light sensitive polymer plate and exposed to UV light
Washing the plate in water etches the image onto the plate
Once hardened, the plate is hand inked using water-soluble intaglio inks
The inked plate is then run through an etching press onto dampened paper
You take home 3 photogravure prints of your image
About Karen Hymer For the past five years Karen Hymer, an artist and educator based out of Silver City, New Mexico, has ventured into the world of printmaking – exploring imagery in the form of photopolymer gravures. Her current work explores the effects of time on the human body and various plant life. Hymer’s richly detailed photogravures emphasize the interplay of texture, pattern, light and shadow in muted earth tones. The decontextualized close-ups of the body and decaying plants reveal a poetic beauty in these often-over-looked subjects.
Here’s how Carol Henry made the large hanging cyanotypes in the Spellbinding Light exhibition. Be sure to see the installation to truly appreciate the beauty of these incredible life-size fabric, cyanotype photogram prints.
Get back in the studio and practice your skills! If you have taken a Photogravure workshop at Art Intersection or are proficient in the process, you are invited to participate in an Open Studio day dedicated to photopolymer gravure. Please note, this is not a workshop; while you are encouraged to share knowledge with your studio mates, there will be no formal instruction.
If you are not familiar with the photopolymer gravure process, learn it the day before in our workshop with Karen Hymer! Find out more and register here.
Materials Pricing
The $40 registration fee includes your access to our lab and equipment during the Open Studio. You are welcome to bring all your own materials and pay no additional fee. However, Art Intersection will have 4×5″ SolarPlates available for $8 each, paper and ink available for $5/print, and digital negatives for $5 each – this is a great option for those just starting out with photogravure, or those that don’t want to invest in their own materials yet. These additional items will be accounted for at the end of the day.
Working Group
In addition to the open lab, the day will start at 9am with a Photogravure Working Group meeting. This is an opportunity to meet other photogravure printers, reconnect with friends from workshops, and share some work you’ve done already. This meeting will last no longer than an hour, but may be briefer depending on the discussion. Art Intersection hosts Working Group meetings and Open Studios on a recurring basis.
The six artists exhibiting work in the Independent Presence exhibition join us at Art Intersection for an engaging and enlightening discussion about their work and backgrounds, creative processes, and interconnected working relationships through Salon Jane.
For ninety minutes you can engage in an interactive conversation with Robin V. Robinson, Jane Olin, Robin Ward, Martha Casanave, Susan Hyde Greene, and Anna Rheim, and following the Artist Talk, the conversation continues in the galleries for the opening reception of Independent Presence.
David Bayles, co-author of the well-known book Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, brings insight to the artists and concept of Independent Presence:
“The artists in this exhibition have found their place by the whole variety of means that artists use to decide who they are, but particularly by extracting themselves from the embrace of two photographic traditions that have become oppressive (West Coast landscape photography and conceptual photography) thereby freeing their intuitions to guide them towards the work they truly need to do. The resulting work belongs to no school of photography but is rather more sui generis – it generates itself out of intuition, out of perception, out of spiritual emotional and psychological relationships with the subject matter.”
Independent Presence, an exhibition bringing the mystery, nature and narrative themes of six independent artists, delivers the power of presence through work ranging from pinhole cameras and darkroom alchemy to digital capture. Each artist, with her own style and vision, shares a connection, linked together through Salon Jane.
These innovative artists escape the deep-rooted West Coast tradition of straight photography to transcend the ordinary by creating work that captures their essence. Through their relationship in the safe and supportive environment of Salon Jane, each artist seeks to expand her creativity, experiment with artistic ideas, and receive honest feedback to push the boundaries of their craft so they can continue to innovate in an already over-saturated discipline.
Artist Talk in the Gallery
An Artist Talk precedes the opening reception giving us the opportunity to hear from these accomplished artists as they discuss their work and background, creative processes, and the connection that brings them together through Salon Jane. You can expect an engaging discussion offering insights to their individual work and the synergy generated through their commitment to supporting each other’s creative growth.
Artists of Salon Jane – Robin V. Robinson, Jane Olin, Robin Ward, Martha Casanave, Susan Hyde Greene, Anna Rheim
Sui Generis
The avant-garde rock ‘n roll diva, Nina Hagen, said it most clearly: “I know who I am and I am willing to declare myself.” To declare yourself you must first find your place in the world – a physical place, a technical place, a psychological spiritual emotional place – a place from which you can do the work you are meant to do. Without such a place it is difficult to speak authentically on the issues you mean to address.
The artists in this exhibition have found their place by the whole variety of means that artists use to decide who they are, but particularly by extracting themselves from the embrace of two photographic traditions that have become oppressive (West Coast landscape photography and conceptual photography) thereby freeing their intuitions to guide them towards the work they truly need to do. The resulting work belongs to no school of photography but is rather more sui generis – it generates itself out of intuition, out of perception, out of spiritual emotional and psychological relationships with the subject matter, and out of an intimate but lighthearted relationship with photography’s notorious technical side, all to the effect that these artists know who they are and are willing to declare themselves.
– David Bayles
Co-author of the well-known book Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
Martha Casanave has been a working, exhibiting, and award-winning photographer and educator for 40 years. She currently teaches photography at Monterey Peninsula College and Cabrillo College. Casanave has published four books of her work. Her latest monograph, Trajectories, A Half Century of Portraits (Image Continuum Press) was released in 2013. Casanave’s photographs are included in many major collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Bibliotheque Nationale, and the Museum of the History of Photography, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Susan Hyde Greene’s images relay stories from impressions of experiences, thoughts and memories about the world around her. She slices and mends photographs into new images. Greene received her BFA in textiles, photography and art history from the University of Hawaii, Manoa and her MFA from the University of Utah. She is represented by Smith Andersen North, Green Chalk Contemporary, and SFMOMA Artists Gallery, and is represented in various public and private collections, including Adobe Systems. She won first place in the Center for Photographic Art’s 2013 Juried Exhibition and received a Marin Arts Council Individual Artists Grant.
Jane Olin has worked as a photographer in the Monterey Bay area for over twenty-five years, and has studied with Ruth Bernhard, John Sexton, and Joyce Tenneson, among others. She loves to experiment with focus, exposure, and printing techniques, both in-camera and in the darkroom. She has exhibited throughout the U. S. and Europe, and was featured in a recent two-person show at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, and Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego.
Anna Rheim graduated from Stanford University with a BA in History in 1966. She studied black and white photography and mixed media at Monterey Peninsula College with Henry Gilpin, Roger Fremier, and Don Anderson, and color photography and printing at University of California Santa Cruz with Jack Fulton. Anna has taken private classes with many noted photographers including David Bayles, Ruth Bernhard, Martha Casanave, Lisl Dennis, Tom Millea, and Ted Orland.
Robin V. Robinson is a fifth generation California central coast native. She received degrees in Engineering and Music from Stanford University and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Robinson studied photography with west coast photography mentors and at City College of San Francisco and Foothill College. She has received top awards in international photographic competitions, and her work is in the permanent collection of the Monterey Museum of Art, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and the Mariners’ Museum in Virginia. Robinson is a Fine Print artist at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, CA, a Cal Poly College of Liberal Arts supporter, and a board member of the Monterey Friends of C.G. Jung.
Robin Ward discovered her love of photography at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte where she received a BA in English. She continued her photography studies by participating in various workshops, including Brooks Institute of Photography and the Center for Photographic Art where she served as a Trustee from 2010-2016. She has received several international awards, including International Photography Awards and Black & White Spider Awards and exhibited her work in numerous galleries and museums throughout the US.
The platinum/palladium process is one of the most beautiful and archival processes, and in this workshop, you will create platinum/palladium prints from your images. Michael will teach a one-day, introductory workshop about this luminous 19th century process in the Art Intersection Photographic Arts Lab and the participants will take home two to three prints of their images.
As a participant, you will send digital files to us and Michael will create a digital negative adjusted for his process. You will hand-coat fine art paper with the light-sensitive solution and expose the sensitized paper through your digital negative using one of our UV light sources. After processing the exposed paper, you will have your photograph as a platinum/palladium print.
Art Intersection will supply all materials for this workshop. The making of a digital negative will be discussed, but for the workshop itself, please send two color or black and white image files (300 dpi at 10” on the long side), at least one week prior to the workshop. An email with details will be provided once you are registered.
Before the workshop, learn more about your instructor and get a preview of the platinum/palladium process! Michael will give a free lecture on his artistic practice on Friday, October 28 from 6:30 – 8pm.
Michael T. Puff
Michael T. Puff lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been a visual artist since early childhood, working as a painter and sculptor. During his years in higher education studying Theater Arts and Egyptian Archaeology, Puff worked as a theater set designer and received many awards for his work from San Francisco Bay Theater Critics. Today he works as a systems computer programmer at Stanford University and builds miniatures, while also pursuing his passion of fine art photography.
Puff began photographing in 2004 and later, under the guidance of master printer Mark I. Nelson, learned the platinum/palladium printing method he uses in his current work. Puff uses modern digital image capture with the extremely permanent and hand-crafted platinum and palladium printing process, merging the contemporary with the historical to produce unique and captivating images. The time-staking printing process he uses, which incorporates platinum and palladium metals into the chemistry, allows for a unique image with a beautiful color and tonal range.
Puff’s love for the theater is evident in much of his work, as he photographs on stage-like sets, often using dancers and actors as models, with images that could function as small moments from a larger narrative. A surreal theme runs through much of his work, as he uses his strong digital editing skills to manipulate scale and mood creating complex otherworldly images.
An image that will be featured in Michael T. Puff’s solo exhibition in Ryan Gallery
Phoenix Rising by Michael T. Puff – featured in the Off the Wall exhibition and silent auction
This past Saturday, March 26 we had the pleasure of hosting a Photogravure workshop taught by Tucson artist Karen Hymer! The weekend began with a lecture by Karen on Friday night – she talked about the history of photogravure and the evolution of her artwork as she continues to use the process.
Seven students joined us for the workshop and got hands-on experience making photopolymer plates from their images, then pulling prints from the plates. Karen taught the process using Solarplates, which are steel plates coated with a light-sensitive polymer emulsion. When exposed, the polymer hardens; the unexposed polymer washes away in water, leaving an “etched” plate ready for inking after the plate has dried in the sun. Ink is then applied to the plate and wiped from the highlight areas. Finally, paper is laid on top of the plate and both are run through an etching press.
We are forever grateful to our friends at Cattletrack Arts Compound and Santo Press for lending us their etching press – we could not have done this workshop without their help!
Karen demonstrates the “development” of the Solarplate in water
Exposed and developed plates harden in the sun
Karen demonstrates inking the plate
Participant Shari Trennert prepares to run her plate through the press
Shari has made a print from a “test strip” plate to check her exposure before committing to a full plate
Jean-Charles Chapuis, Cyd Peroni, Tom Moore, and Gina DeGideo hard at work inking their plates
Chris Palmer and Karen compare a test print with another print of the same image to check for contrast and density
Gina uses a cotton swab to fine-tune her ink application
Cyd lays a sheet of fine-art water color paper over her inked plate before running it through the press
Participants enjoy letting their creativity run free and working in a community environment
Participants let their finished prints dry before taking them home
The Art Intersection Staff selected three artists from eighty-nine artists in the Light Sensitive exhibition, our signature traditional photography exhibition, to have their own exhibition called “Best of Light Sensitive 2014”. This year Tom Persigner, photographer, writer, and the founder of F295, juried Light Sensitive and selected work for the exhibition in March and April, 2014. Images from Light Sensitive 2014.
Douglas Collins – I make photographs without using a camera – or, in the case of these works, without even a darkroom. In my work I reject accepted forms of photographic meaning, but try instead to create moments of lucidity through a meditation on form and intention. This tends to minimalistic results, and the pictures are often purified of all but essential structure. I set my own rules but often live by violating them. In place of traditional approaches I invest in a deep contemplation on the physical materials of the photographic act itself, in the tradition of Fox Talbot. I live and work in New York City.
These works are chemigrams, a type of photographic art made without a camera and without a darkroom. In this process, black and white photographic paper is exposed to daylight and then is coated with a varnish, which functions as a resist. By soaking the paper in fixer and developer alternately, the resist is gradually lifted, and color is created by the physical effects on silver grains in the emulsion that result from a certain rhythm of soaking. The artist may intervene, attacking the paper with knives, sticks, or hands to induce additional imagery. The process has antecedents going back to the origin of photography.
Mary Donato – Following my retirement in 2006 after 30 years as a research geologist, I began to explore photography and printmaking as ways to satisfy both my analytical and creative impulses. I have no formal training in fine art or photography, nor was I given a vintage camera by an aging relative when I was a child. Nevertheless, I consider myself a fully-engaged amateur photographer and printmaker who combines 21st-century digital devices with 19th-century printing processes to create handmade photographic images.
I am compelled to explore the ephemeral beauty of everyday life, sometimes in deliberate compositions, but more often in incidental situations. These prints display a range of scale and chroma. They represent my efforts to convey a mood or a visual idea, and nothing more. Producing unique prints by hand seems the perfect approach for such imagery.
Erin K Malone – Located in San Francisco, California, Erin Malone spends her days as a User Experience Design Consultant while wishing she was out in the field with her cameras. She received her first camera at 10 and taking it to Girl Scout camp, she promptly left it behind.
A few years later and being much more responsible, she purchased her first manual SLR. Photo classes in high school and serving on the newspaper as a photographer, began her foray into “real” photography.
Coming full circle, Erin primarily works with film, vintage, plastic and lensless cameras and in historic and alternative processes.
Erin’s photos have been shown in group and juried exhibitions across the United States, they have won several awards and are in a few collections, including the Museum of Fine Art, Houston. Her work has been featured in publications such as B&W Magazine, Diffusion, Light Leaks and San Francisco Magazine and the San Francisco PBS produced program KQED Quest.
About the Juror
Tom Persinger is a photographer, writer, and the founder of F295. His photographs have been shown in numerous exhibitions and are in private collections in the United States, Europe, and Japan. His work has been featured in many publications, including Afterimage, Ag, Photo.net, View Camera, and many books on photographic technique and processing.
Persinger has lectured at colleges and universities, leads hands-on workshops, and is a member of Freestyle Photographic’s Advisory Board of Photographic Professionals. His first book Photography Beyond Technique: Essays from F295 on the Informed use of Alternative and Historical Photographic Processes will be released by Focal Press/Taylor and Francis in Spring 2014.
He is especially interested in contemporary photography that considers in its manufacture the intersections of process, subject, and content and the work that can be created in that exciting intersection. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons.
Starting Friday evening and working through Sunday, the workshop students learned about creating digital negatives for platinum/palladium, chemistry, and then made prints in the alt process lab.
Keith shared his expertise with the class and showed the process he uses to make palladium and platinum prints. You may remember Keith’s work on exhibit in the North Gallery along with Dick Arentz this past January and February during the Art Intersection Platinum/Palladium exhibition.
Checking the first digital negatives for densities and checking exposure times.
Keith concentrating on building and explaining digital negatives and Quad Tone RIP.
Discussing paper choices.
Ready to print.
Coating Arches Platine with a glass rod.
Time to expose.
High tech or low tech, it’s all about UV light.
Pouring on the developer.
Trying the cold tone developer.
Clearing.
In the final wash.
Final prints drying before going to the critique wall.
Some of the dry prints on the critique wall. Others were still too wet to show by the end of the workshop.