The launch and benefit for the Paper Fox Printmaking Workshop will take place Saturday, May 14 from 2-6 p.m. at the Wriston Art Center.
The event, planned by Assistant Professor of Art Benjamin Rinehart and several students from his Intermediate and Advanced Printmaking courses, will offer printmaking demonstrations, workshops and sales of prints.
Sophomore Deborah Levinson commented, “Our printmaking class this term has been very involved in setting up the Paper Fox Printmaking Workshop. Though Ben did most of the startup work, as a class we’ve designed a logo, helped visiting artists, learned about small business finances, dealt with marketing and publicity, learned about scanning and storing artwork — and getting the digital rights — and created short-term and long-term goals for Paper Fox.”
Levinson stressed the importance of the visiting artists that Paper Fox has brought in this year. According to Levinson, visiting artists such as Jeff Morin, Nicole Hand and Nancy Palmeri “provide a different perspective and invaluable feedback about student artwork.”
“This term I helped a visiting artist print using a process we were just starting in class,” said Levinson. “Helping her not only made me more confident about how the process works, but also gave me ideas about the direction I wanted to take my own work.”
Junior Emily Hallock, Chair of the Visiting Artist Committee, said, “the opening benefit will be a great experience for people in the Lawrence community as well as those from the Appleton area to experience first hand what printmaking is and how versatile it is… I have really grown to love the medium and have also grown as an artist because of it.”
Hallock will have a nine-layered reductive woodcut on sale at the event, as well as prints of a student-composed haiku for which Hallock herself composed the print type. Visiting artists have produced intaglio, woodcuts and linocuts throughout the year, which will also be on sale.
Rinehart hopes the Paper Fox Printmaking Workshop will become an annual event. “The Fox Valley doesn’t have any artistic printmaking institutions,” Rinehart said, emphasizing his vision for establishing “a good print culture for this area.”
Rinehart is also excited for his students to have the opportunity to use newly-acquired letterpress equipment, funded by the Coleman Foundation and other sources.
“Paper Fox will provide a unique advantage to printmaking students at Lawrence, which most schools of our size are unable to offer,” Levinson said. “And because printmaking and its uses have changed over the years, seeing a contemporary, currently-working artist can be a great help in connecting all the dots between ancient Japanese woodcuts and me.”