Archive
Mel Strawn’s Theoretical Observations on Solarplate Printmaking
Mel Strawn and his lovely and talented wife, Bernice (“B”), spent three weeks working with Maureen in her studio during last February. Mel and Maureen worked mainly on solar-plate techniques using Dan Welden plates. While Maureen is eminently intuitive, Mel, a lifelong art professor who started making digital prints in 1981, likes some theoretical grounding. So when he got back home to Salida, Colorado, he started thinking about what exactly the two of them had been doing with the solar plates. Here are his preliminary conclusions. Read more…
Chicago Girlz Set New Production Benchmarks for Work in Maureen’s Studio
The Chicago Girlz (our affectionate nickname), an extraordinary trio of printmakers made up of Deborah Lader, founder and director of The Chicago Printmakers Collaborative, her mother Carol Lader and Carol’s sister (Deborah’s aunt) Janet Imerman, have set new benchmarks for printmaking zeal in my studio. These remarkable young people stepped off the Chicago-Granada flight (Janet was actually coming straight through from Los Angeles) at midday last Monday, put down their bags in the Gallinero, rested for a whole hour and then proceeded to my studio to begin making prints. And that was the pace they maintained for the rest of the week, till we put them on the bus to Madrid this morning. I never saw such printmaking joy and fervor. Most nights they were in the studio until past midnight. It was a challenge to keep up with them.
They had never done solar-plate prints before, and were anxious to immerse themselves in the techniques and get a grip on them once and for all. This was particularly true for Deborah, who wanted to determine whether solar plate was something she should be offering in her Chicago Printmakers Collaborative open studio at home. She concluded that it was. Read more…
Brenda Eubank-Ahrens and Her International School of Bremen Art Students Spend Three Intensive Days Working in The Gallinero and Maureen’s Studio
Brenda visited Maureen’s Pomegranate Editions a year ago (thanks to their mutual friend, Alice Doeldissen) and when the tour was over Brenda asked Maureen if she could create a workshop the following summer for a dozen or so of her 17-year-old art students from the International School of Bremen. The answer was yes, and the the group has just spent three intensive days working with Maureen in her studio and El Gallinero learning solar-plate etching techniques. The artistic level of these 17 year olds was remarkably high, and that coupled with their enthusiasm made for some interesting results (see photo presentation below).
Their school has recently joined the prestigious International Baccalaureate program, and this was a select international group of students. Many of them were from Bremen and other parts of Germany, but other countries were represented, as well: the U.S.A., Mexico, Poland… As everyone knows, printmaking makes one hungry, so when the morning’s work was finished all the students, along with their two monitors, Brenda and Frankie, sat down to a hearty Spanish-style lunch at the picnic table on Maureen’s terrace.
Here is a selection of photographs which will give you an idea of what their visit was like:
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"El Gallinero"--An Artists' & Writers' Refuge in Granada 