Seen from where I have been

ps200627 Seen from where I have been:  

A press and the modem artist  

Having been far, I added some impressions to my ongoing education. I learned a press is more than meets the eye, that it’s a generator of dreams and anticipation when seen by an artist, craftsperson and designer who makes printing plates for enjoyment and elucidation.

Upon Seeing an ugly press

Ten days ago, I thought about going where no one has been, and as I glanced over the Facebook groups dedicated to prints, printmaking and presses I thought:

“What ugly presses!”

Where did I get the notion that printing presses should be beautiful?

  
Two examples of ugliness in presses – one assembled from junk and one of such large and heavy proportions that they are unaffordable.

It is because I have been where no other printmakers have been. I’ve been around the world, for example, in one contiguous journey. Before that I have been in many schools, workshops, and museums – plus I’ve been in machine shops to realize my dream of a perfect press. I’ve in the Rembrandt Museum and I’ve seen a facsimile of the old master’s press.

Having done this, and added these impressions to my ongoing education, I learned that a press is more than meets the eye, that it’s a generator of dreams and anticipation when taken by an artist, craftsperson and designer who makes printing plates for enjoyment.

It is clear to me that the press should be a progenitor of beautiful prints. Add to this the digital age where communicating the image of the print virtually is reasonably simple and an added pleasure; and the combination is harmonious.

A beautiful press makes beautiful prints; and it can make a beautiful life for the one who has the fortune to have a beautiful, functional press such as this.

Bill Ritchie’s award-winning designs, the Halfwood press and the Wee Woodie Rembrandt Press

The designs of the Halfwood Press and the Wee Woodie Rembrandt Press come from my having been where no one has gone.

From the days I transitioned from farmer to professor I gained a deep and wide range of views from which to see printing presses.

The most important view is that a press is an instrument, not a tool, not merely equipage. Similar to what a pipe wrench is to a plumber and an explorer is to a dentist, one is a mechanical thing in the hands of a mechanic while the other – the delicate, fine instrument in the hands of a highly skilled and knowledgeable person in oral health – is an instrument.

A musician does not refer to his or her violin or piano, or voice, as a tool but as an instrument. Over centuries, such musical instruments have been refined so that they combine physical characteristics to achieve both visual and utility perfection in the musician’s art, craft and design; and so, it is, too, with the printmaker.

The second most important of these views, these printmaking worldviews I’ve gained, is that the press is the ancestor of all sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics that are the cornerstones of the STEM movement in education.

Without print, these would be moribund, never leaving the confines of their discoverers, inventors, imaginers and creators. It’s this view that justifies printmaking experiences for young people (and old people looking for continuous, contiguous learning experiences).

The idea that art should be implanted in the acronym STEM to make STEAM is a good idea. It’s that which Allan Bloom said in his book, Closing of the American Mind is what makes artists valuable to problem-solving enterprises:

“The artist is the most interesting of all phenomena, for he represents creativity, the definition of man. His unconscious is full of monsters and dreams. It provides the pictures to consciousness, which takes them as given and as "world," and rationalizes them. Rationality is only the activity of providing good reasons for what has no reason or is unreasonable. We do what we do out of a fate that is our individuality, but we have to explain and communicate. This latter is the function of consciousness; and when it has been provided with a rich store by the unconscious, its activity is fruitful, and the illusion of its sufficiency is even salutary. But when it has chopped up and chewed over its inheritance, as mathematical physics has now done, there are not enough nourishing plants left whole. Consciousness now requires replenishment. Thus, Nietzsche opened up the great terrain explored by modern artists, psychologists, and anthropologists, searching for refreshment for our exhausted culture in the depths of the darkest unconscious or darkest Africa.”[1]

[Note: in one iteration, I mis-typed modern and typed modem, to yield modem artists. Ha ha! Or, that I may have used a scanner to get this text, and the scanner saw the r next to the n and resulted in an m (em)]

This overly-long paragraph boils down to the need that there be an artist among the five solvers-of-problems facing Earth’s human and other life-sustaining ability.

Not just any artist, however. The painter works alone, for example, but the artist who calls himself or herself a printmaker is more suitable for the teamwork and collaboration than artists who work in solitary and are disinclined to collaborate.

The press that is designed for collaboration is a perfect press and should be in the hands of young people in STEAM education programs. A structure for collaboration is an insurance policy for hope.

I want to use my assets to make this so. The press is that structure, thanks to the modem artist, an artist who sees a modem as a perfect press.

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[1] Bloom, Allan. Closing of the American Mind. Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster. NY. 1987. P. 206