os180517 Norwegian Independence Day 

Bringing to mind a compatriot 

In 1969, Lynda and I struggled across the median of Karl Johann’s Gate to catch a shuttle to the airport. I was weighed down with a wooden box containing the plates I made at Rolf Nesch’s studio and at Atelier Nord, Anne Breivik’s workshop. Hurrying by outdoor patios filled with people quaffing beer, we envied them as they celebrated the holiday while we had to catch a plane to France.

Today, 48 years later, I sent a message off to Adam King, an Englishman living in Norway with his wife and kids who is translating the latest biography of Rolf Nesch. He asked me to clarify some technical points in the manuscript before it goes off to the printer. They were matters of what the printmaking terms meant, moving from Norwegian to English that would make sense to English readers.

I enjoyed it as I got me the feeling of a time-traveler, seeing that our effort in 1969 had come to some good. To anyone who has not had an experience like this it’s a small, trivial matter; but to me it brought me a reward. Call it perspective, seeing how the mere translation of the Norwegian term bunnplaten into the literal bedding plate to the more accurate background plate comes by way of years of experience.

Back to the present, I think about the visit I made to the homepage of a printmaker in Seattle who blogged about her use of a background plate. In this instance she referred to a monotype background for an overprinting of a linoleum-cut image she included with her remarks. Like me, she’s a world traveler as shown in the same context:

“I find traveling and translating those little moments of journeying into a 2-D print useful in highlighting and making sense of how I and others around me fit into the world. More importantly I would love to expand my exploration and bring it into a public sphere to expand the conversation of places and spaces in Seattle as it grows and changes.”

In her words I sense that she’s a companion in my thinking, feeling, perhaps, how I felt (and do feel today) as when I was a twenty-eight-year-old and getting started as a world-traveling artist and teacher. Now, at seventy-six, my role as teacher is small, merely helping an English translator get the text just right for the author writing Nesch’s biography.

It pleases me to know that I was correct in my assumption back in the 1960’s that the information age would bring unexpected benefits to artists even as a traditional printmakers, allowing for intellectual exchanges that could help keep the work of artists like Rolf Nesch (one of my teachers) alive long after their passing.

But how, I have to wonder, can I help a young, living artist like the woman who “. . . would love to expand (her) exploration and bring it into a public sphere to expand the conversation of places and spaces in Seattle as it grows and changes.” She says that it is more important than finding how she and others fit into the world.

I agree with her. It is important to bring this exploration into a public sphere and to expand the conversation of places and spaces into our city. Her approach is different than mine, I suppose. I don’t know what it is, so I cannot say. Mine, however, is definite: I would say she should help the formation of the International Print Center and Inkubators.