March / Apri 2016 - art ltd 41Opposite top to bottom:
Portland Fine Print Fair 2016
Photo: courtesy Portland Art Museum
Studio Shot, Midwest Pressed, featured at the SGCI
Oregon College of Art and Craft (all of which are co-sponsoring
the SGCI conference), as well as Lewis & Clark College and Reed.
The tradition of teaching and learning continues at the SGCI event,
with classes built around this year’s theme, “Flux: The Edge of
Yesterday and Tomorrow.” In addition to seminars devoted to
Japanese and Native American printmaking, there is a host of
timely topics built into the conference curriculum, among them
“Socially Engaged Printmaking” and “Printmaking and Gender.”
In addition to a lifetime achievement award to be bestowed on
this year’s keynote speaker, painter and printmaker James Rosen-
quist, two other awardees, Tom Prochaska and Christy Wyckoff,
will be honored for their decades-long teaching careers at PNCA.
For his part, Wyckoff believes that economic necessities tend to
draw “print people” together. “It’s a subculture where you’re not
just the Lone Ranger doing everything by yourself,” he says.
“Because of the cost of the equipment, you’re sharing space
and tools with other people. There’s a lot of collaboration.” He
also feels that Portland-based printmakers have benefited from
the longtime presence in the city of Gamblin Paint Company,
which offers a wide array of printer’s inks, and McClain’s
Printmaking Supplies in nearby Tigard, which imports Japanese
woodblock print supplies and papers.
“We have an ecosystem here that supports prints: makers,
suppliers, collectors, galleries, schools, and of course the
museum,” echoes Portland Art Museum’s curator for prints and
drawings. Mary Weaver Chapin. “One thing that impressed me
when I came here was the presence of makers, not just in tradi-
tional printmaking, but also letterpress and other processes where
people are striking out on their own, not just sitting around waiting
for official approval. It’s really vigorous and unapologetic.” As ex-
emplars, she points to local printmaking entrepreneurs Mark and
Rae Mahaffey, who run Mahaffey Fine Art, a collaborative print-
making workshop, and to the powerful impact of Crow’s Shadow
Institute of the Arts, a printmaking studio and gallery in Eastern
Oregon founded by James Lavadour, arguably Oregon’s most
celebrated living artist.
These synergies, which are easy for local artists to take for
granted, are immediately apparent to printmaking professionals
who visit from other parts of the country and the world. David
O’Donoghue, co-director of Stoney Road Press (Dublin, Ireland)
was one of 18 exhibitors with booths at the Portland Fine Print
Fair. “Of all the fairs we do,” he remarked afterwards, “nowhere
except in Portland have I seen a queue halfway down the block
to get in half-an-hour before it opens!” As to the attendees them-
selves, “They know what they’re looking at, and they’re not shy.
They’re asking questions, they’re engaged, they’re passionate
about printmaking techniques, they love paper and deckled
edges—and they all seem to know one another.”
Community, infrastructure, and an affinity between landscape,
materials, and process all contribute to a “perfect storm” of
opportunity for print aficionados in Oregon. Or, more dramatically,
as Chapin puts it: “This state is bearish on prints—it’s a fervor!”
—RICHARD SPEER