Custom Work Now and Then  

Comparison of printing and coding  

Fifty years ago he was introduced to art as serving people who like fine art prints according to tradition and innovation in printmaking, which is his domain of expertise. Service changed as the art form evolved to include digital in addition to material.

Prints and people

“Prints and People” is the title of a book published in 1971 about the social and cultural aspects of printmaking. A. Hyatt Mayor, the author, points out the effects of prints on literacy, commerce, science, fashions, religion and political power. I must have read it soon after it was published, because the early 1970's marks a turning point in my career. Or, you might call it a time when I came to a fork in the road and I took it—famously advised by Yogi Berra.

My life up until then had been okay. I had a wonderful wife (still do), a house, a car, two daughters and, to keep this good life going, a pretty good job. The job was being an art teacher at the University of Washington School Of Art. This job required that you keep studying art, practicing the art you were hired to teach, be a good teacher and stay out of trouble with the bosses.

I was good at the first three requirements, but not so good at staying out of trouble—but that’s another story. Those first three things—keeping on studying, practicing and teaching—were harmonious. The catch was, however, that the better you became at these, the harder it was to keep out of trouble. But, as I said, that’s another story.

The benefit was that I kept my job for nineteen years and it was because I learned there was a fourth requirement—one that people did not talk about very much. It is service. So teaching, research, practice and service became my magic formula for success.

At the university, for example, the professors are regarded as experts by the people outside the university—the people in the community. This is a global pattern. We—my family and I—traveled around the world one year and everywhere we went I found people willing to help us in part because I had my professor’s credentials. Doors opened, even on short notice, and people showed us things and gave us things and hospitality which, I suppose, were given because of my title—Professor of Art.

It follows, then, that when community people right around the university or from abroad wanted expert opinion, they called me sometimes. Not only that, but when my students needed extra service—such as giving advice on subjects that were not taught in college at the time—they came to me. I learned, as Yogi Berra said about taking the fork in the road, referred to a major life decision. If the road forks, it’s like coming to an opportunity to take a new and better direction. The first fork I came to was when we got back to Seattle after studying in Europe for a few months—should I keep doing what I was doing in printmaking, or take up video art?

It was risky. I was making a good salary, my art was selling, and I was getting into art shows and winning prizes. It was recursive, because the better I was at my art, the bosses gave me promotions and grants to keep doing what I was doing. The road had been going along like a freeway and then I came to electronic media—and I took it up. My stay in Europe had exposed me to old men—artists—who had come to forks decades before me and made similar choices. Their art was printmaking, like mine, and what I took for granted in my early days was new when they were young artists. In fact, they invented printmaking as a form of fine art.

Digital art

The expression “digital art” is commonly used today to refer to works on paper or canvas that were made all or in part by computer-data driven printers, cutters, laser-burners, etc. In printmaking, digital prints are accepted as being the same thing as etchings, woodcut prints, lithographs and screen prints. As A. Hyatt Mayor suggested in his book, “Prints and People,” the evolution of the effects of printing continue and art teachers are teaching, researching and producing digital printmaking the same way as they had been taught.

One thing I think that is under served, is service itself. This came to mind today as I was updating a web page on one of my websites. This one shows most of the people who own my work—usually known as art patrons. It occurred to me that in the 1970s I spent as much time making a print as it took me to update a web page today. Let’s say it was 15 minutes. In those fifteen minutes I could have been printing an etching or block print or I could have been working on a plate to print tomorrow.

I might, in time, sell the print to someone and then they would become another patron. I have about four-hundred names of people and institutions who own my work. In the past ten years, about 150 of those names are of people who do not own my art but who own one of the presses (and in a few instances, two presses) I designed. They sometimes call my presses, “Works of art.”

It calls to mind that I am doing a kind of service for my art patrons by spending a quarter-hour updating their page on my website. The page is dedicated to them, but it also has links in the page’s content. These may be in the form of a YouTube video, or there might be links to their Website if they have one. Some have links to the pages on my website of other people who own a similar work of mine—such as one of the edition of the prints like the one they own, or another press like the one that I made.

New market for artists

The college where I taught was pretty good at teaching art students how to produce works of art; and in a few cases, they also taught art students how to teach either by intention through art education classes or by chance. There was not much emphasis on research outside of the art history classes, and almost no science or technology. As for service, it was never mentioned that I know of.

And yet, in today’s world, service may be the only viable—that is, sustainable—activity for artists. That was the choice I made—albeit unconsciously—in the early 1970's. The road less traveled, as Whitman said, was the electronic arts, and for me it has made all the difference.