Panels
Panel 1: Selling Out?
Friday, November 2nd, 10:15-noon
Bedell Performance Hall
Moderator: Charles Beneke
Panelists: Denise Bookwalter, Bob Erickson, Lari Gibbons, Nicole Hand, Scott L. Smith
Entrepreneurial initiatives in academic printshops are becoming more and more common and increasingly necessary. With dwindling budgets, a lack of institutional funding for shop equipment and student travel, and the need to promote our printmaking programs, we find ourselves playing the parts of both educators and entrepreneurs. This panel will investigate ways that academic printshops have integrated entrepreneurial practices into their shops and curricula. Panelists will address the successes and failures they have seen in their programs with the ventures that they have undertaken. They will discuss the ways these initiatives have benefited their shops and expanded the scope of their academic goals, but also question their effects on artistic integrity, additional demands on the curriculum, faculty, and facilities, and the distractions created from the hard work necessary for students to become accomplished artists. Are there hidden costs to financially profitable activities? How can we seamlessly integrate them into our programs? Are we selling to enrich our programs or are we selling out?
Panel 2: The Beauty of Collaborative Studios: The Internship at Women’s Studio Workshop
Friday, November 2nd, 10:15-noon
Crisp Museum
Moderators: Amy Schmierbach, Melissa Haviland
Panelists: Carolyn Baginski, Bryn Sumner, Erin Woodbrey
As a young artist, it is important to expand ones education outside of the academic classroom. Internships are a great way to bridge the gap between a traditional education and the REAL world of ART. The Women’s Studio Workshop has offered internships to young women for over 20 years. These 4 to 12 month experiences have empowered hundreds of women to become strong artists, educators, community leaders, and entrepreneurs throughout the country. This panel will bring a few of these experiences to light. The courageous four founding woman brought together an innovative collaborative spirit to the printmaking community. In the midst of a male dominated art world, they banded together to create this safe art space for women to gather, make, and share their art. To continue this strong spirit they created a dynamic internship to continually impact young women’s lives, artwork, and teaching methods.
Panel 3: NFS: Printmakers Reject and Reclaim the Marketplace
Friday, November 2nd, 1:30-3 pm
Bedell Performance Hall
Moderator: Nathan Meltz
Panelists: Tonja Torgerson, Joseph Velasquez
Throughout its history, printmaking has held a position in the marketplace quite different from other art media like painting, sculpture, and the plastic arts. Its inherent ability to create multiples has allowed printmaking to remain democratic in its dissemination and affordable to a diverse audience. From historical figures like Jules Cheret to contemporary print collectives like Just Seeds, printmakers achieve mass levels of communication by printing large editions and creating objects often viewed in the art market as less precious than their counterparts in the world of painting or sculpture.
Today, some printmakers are taking this stance of mass dissemination ever further, adding to it the distrust of the art object formulated by the work of the Situationists in the 1960’s and the contemporary writing of critics like Nato Thompson. Printmakers create works of a totally ephemeral nature, using disposable substrates in large editions or wheatpasting in the public space. Printmakers combine video and animation into their practices, creating work hard to classify into the gallery context. And printmakers even incorporate performance into their work, creating the most non-commodifiable work in attempt to subvert a capitalist model.
Panel 4: Appropriate Appropriation
Friday, November 2nd, 1:30-3 pm
Crisp Museum
Moderators: Johntimothy Pizzuto, Sarah Sik
Panelists: Stephen Black, Cory Knedler, Sarah Whorf
The invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg in the mid-15th century arguably ushered in the first era of mass media. While the work of the printing press is to multiply objects and increase their accessibility, this very reproducibility opened the door for questions concerning the monetary value of the printed image, the intellectual rights of its maker, and the social right to cite, parody, and satirize the mass media that bombards the collective imagination.
The digital age exponentially increases access to information and enables a growing culture of individuals able to borrow freely from any source. Appropriation and fair use are timely subjects for a conference on entrepreneurship in printmaking and highly relevant for artists, educators and historians in this new frontier.
The format for the panel is itself an act of homage and appropriation, modeled on Steve Allen’s PBS series Meeting of the Minds. Appropriate Appropriation will address these issues through a dynamic roundtable discussion, featuring five historical guest figures. A lively conversation will unfold, eventually including members of the audience.
Panel 5: Altruism, Alms and Palms: Collaboration and Connection through printmaking in the Asia-Pacific Region
Saturday, November 3rd, 9:00-10:15 am
Crisp Museum
Moderator: Michael Kempson
Panelists: Rabeya Jalil, Ben Rak
Printmaking practice in the vast and diverse Asia/Pacific region encompasses many cultural attitudes and practical approaches. This session offers insights into the activities of two educational institutions, one from Karachi and the other in Sydney, each significant art schools in their respective countries. Rabeya Jalil, from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, outlines two portfolio projects initiated to generate income for equipment infrastructure and to celebrate the value of collaborative learning. This was accomplished by mobilizing high profile Pakistani artists, highlighting the inherent selflessness of a fiscally poor but vibrant arts community. Ben Rak and Michael Kempson, from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, will offer two perspectives of a research based custom-printing workshop called Cicada Press. While addressing projects involving China, Thailand, Pakistan, Taiwan and New Zealand, the focus will be on the opportunities offered to artists from disadvantaged backgrounds. The resulting workshops, with tribal and urban Australian Aborigines, asylum seekers released from detention and artists impacted by intellectual disabilities, affirm the transformative value of meaningful educational opportunities through printmaking.
Panel 6: Student Panel: Making a Living in Art: A Discussion with Entrepreneurial Printmakers
Saturday, November 3rd, 10:30-noon
Bedell Performance Hall
Moderators: Nicole Geary, Matthew Presutti, Michelle St. Vrain
Panelists: J W Buchanan, Melissa Buchanan, Rachel Lackey, Johanna Mueller
With a bleak economic outlook affecting job opportunities, graduating art students face the question of how to continue their print work when academic facilities are no longer available. Compounding the issue is the big initial investment in traditional presses, with printmaking options few and far between in small communities. Student moderators will facilitate a discussion with several panelists who have found success in diverse ways. Whether the answer is to build a home studio, join or found an arts organization, or begin taking prints on the road, our panel will explore the problems faced by printmaking artists and some of the entrepreneurial solutions to our need for pressure to print.
Panel 7: Craft and Collaboration: Printmaking Outside Academia
Saturday, November 3rd, 10:30-noon
Crisp Museum
Panelists: Mirka Hokkanen, Stephanie Smith, Josh Winkler
This panel highlights the diverse activities of three American printmaking organizations and their unique efforts to advance the art of printmaking both nationally and internationally. Mirka Hokkanen of Pica Doodle Press takes advantage of her on-the-go lifestyle by teaching print workshops all over the US and recently in Europe. She markets her work to fairs, galleries, and online communities through blogging and an Etsy shop. The Atlanta Printmakers Studio provides the Georgia community with classes, workshops, exhibitions, community outreach, internships and opportunities for emerging artists. Highpoint Center for Printmaking takes on a similar role in the upper Midwest providing Minneapolis/St Paul and surrounding areas with an artist co-operative, educational & community programming, a professional publishing shop (Highpoint Editions), and a public exhibition space.
Panel 8: Education Panel: Rubbing Shoulders
Saturday, November 3rd, 1:30-3 pm
Bedell Performance Hall
Moderator: Kent Kapplinger
Panelists: Dr. Stephen Frech, Dr. Laurie Geller, Bill Harbort, John Volk
Artists are visual learners who require a combination of observation and application to feel self-assured in their medium. Learning the business side of art is really no different. Artists benefit from hands-on experience as well as rubbing shoulders with others who produce art, support the arts, or organize art events.
This panel will highlight a range of successful methods for introducing students to real-world business experience. Kent Kapplinger will discuss how the North Dakota State University Art/PEARS institute, through its collaborative print projects and workshops provides professional business experience to students, from writing contracts and scheduling artists to promoting print sales. Dr. Stephen Frech will describe ‘Entrepreneurship in the Classroom,‘ a course that launched a student letterpress business at Millikin University. Dr. Laurie Geller and Bill Harbort will describe NOTSTOCK, an annual three-day event at Minot State University where artists associated with the alternative music industry screenprint posters, art prints, and promotional products. John Volk will share experiences about student interns working collaboratively between Minnesota State University Moorhead and the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota.
Panel 9: Surveying the Possibilities: from Co-ops to Private Presses
Saturday, November 3rd, 1:30-3 pm
Crisp Museum
Moderators: Joey Behrens
Panelists: Josh Daninn, Todd A. Irwin, Colin Roe Ledbetter
As the theme of the conference demonstrates, in addition to its long history of sharing ideas and resources, the printmaking community is made up of innovators. These innovators are people who have figured out strategies and developed resources to overcome the challenges they face. For graduating students, or anyone leaving an institutionally based shop, the first challenge is how to keep printing. One shop that kept the moderator printing, a non-profit co-operative called SaltGrass Printmakers, was started in response to this challenge. This panel will present the results of a survey of print shops and presses to examine why they form, the structure of the shop (i.e. non-profit community shops, co-operatives, private press), the partnerships they form, and the needs they fill. The focus will be to present different options and structures for starting a shop or press, how others have found niches from which to grow, and to highlight innovations found through the research process.
Panel 10: Entrepreneurship Panel: The Non-Profit/Commercial and Community Shop: A Celebratory and Cautionary Tale
Saturday, November 3rd, 3:15-5 pm
Crisp Museum
Moderator: David Jones
Panelists: Angee Lennard, Thomas Lucas
This panel has been designed as more of a conversation than as a presentation.
While we all love printmaking, we've had to don different hats to make our enterprises work. We will be talking about the skills we have or needed to learn to make these creative endeavors succeed.
This is an opportunity to discuss and ask questions about how to start up your own non-profit or business. We will share the realities of running a shop or non-profit organization. Rather than a show and tell, this panel is intended to be a conversation revolving around the nuts and bolts of what we were prepared for when starting out and what we weren't. Each one of the panelists has succeeded in networking and to some degree getting out of their comfort zone to make their enterprises work. Audience members will be encouraged to participate.
Panel11: Printerdisciplinary Practices: A Panel Discussion
Saturday, November 3rd, 3:15-5 pm
Bedell Performance Hall
Moderators: Robert Howsare, Cayla Skillin-Brauchle
Panelists: Kelly John Clark, Eric Dobbins, Leslie A. Grossman, Travis Janssen
Adaptability and risk-taking are two inherent qualities of the entrepreneurial spirit, For generations, printmakers have been at the forefront of technological innovation, dissemination techniques, and creation of artwork. Recently, we have seen a shift as printmakers are beginning to incorporate various art disciplines into their printmaking practice. In this panel, we will discuss the interdisciplinary methodologies utilized by young printmakers in transforming the two-dimensional print into a space that encourages interactivity through performance and spectacle. The versatility of printmaking allows for this synthesis of artistic disciplines while maintaining and simultaneously expanding upon the inherent qualities of print media.