: report
PORTLAND
Print Culture is booming in the Pacific Northwest.
In a state abounding with natural resources—the Cascade mountain
range, old-growth forests, copper mines dating to the 1860s—and
a hardworking, practical-minded populace descended from pioneer
stock, it’s apropos that printmaking would come to prominence in
Oregon’s cultural milieu. Natural materials are endemic to stone li-
thography, woodblock prints, copperplate, and other variants, as are
the methodical approach and old-fashioned elbow grease required
to master these intensely physical processes. But symbolic links
between nature and materiality are far from the only reasons that
Oregon, and Portland in particular, has become a mecca for printmak-
ers. A broad confluence of infrastructure and esprit de corps was on
display for the world to see this January at the third annual Portland
Fine Print Fair, held at Portland Art Museum, and will draw similar
worldwide attention from March 30 to April 2. That’s when the city
will host the annual SGCI (Southern Graphics Council International)
conference—only the second time in the organization’s 44-year his-
tory that the conference will have visited the West Coast.
To take even a cursory snapshot of the printmaking scene in Oregon,
one needs a wide-angle lens. Drawings and prints have formed an
important part of the Portland Art Museum’s holdings and program-
ming ever since its founding in 1892. Significant gifts and acquisitions
through the decades reached a climax in 1978, when art educator
and curator Gordon Gilkey donated some 8,000 prints to PAM, span-
ning the gamut of techniques, subject matter, and historical practices.
The gift became the cornerstone of what is today a collection of
22,000 works on paper. Notably, many of the region’s best-known
artists taught printmaking at PAM in its earlier years, when it had
an educational arm known as The Museum Art School. Louis Bunce
taught screenprinting there, Manuel Izquierdo taught relief printing,
and George Johanson taught etching. In the regional visual-arts
culture, those are some big guns.
Another Portland print-community milestone came a year after
Gilkey’s donation, when Robert Kochs became owner and director
of Augen Gallery. Under his direction, Augen went on to become one
of the Northwest’s leading sources of Modernist, Pop, and contempo-
rary prints. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the medium and its
market, Kochs has brokered major acquisitions for a roster of exacting
clients. Among these is one of the West Coast’s most important print
collectors, Jordan D. Schnitzer, whose personal and Family Founda-
tion collections include nearly 10,000 prints, with an emphasis on
Warhol, Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, John Baldessari, Robert Longo,
and Kara Walker. Schnitzer has not only lent his prints to myriad
exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum and the Jordan Schnitzer
Museum at the University of Oregon (Eugene), but to dozens of
museums around the world, without charging exhibition fees.
In 1981, two years after Kochs bought Augen, the nonprofit North-
west Print Council/Print Arts Northwest was founded, exhibiting
works by artist members and printmakers of international renown.
The organization’s educational outreaches are part of a strong
pedagogical tradition in Portland, with printmaking courses or entire
programs offered variously at the Pacific Northwest College of Art,
Portland State University, Portland Community College, and the
40 art ltd - March / April 2016