E-Content developers invited to submit their works in eight categories: E. power and authority, E. health and the environment, E. learning and education, E. entertainment and lifestyle, E. culture and heritage, E. Science and Technology, E. business and commerce and E. Engaging and empowering.

Winners of the competition will be given the right to represent Lithuania in the global “World Summit Award 2013 which annually competes 168 countries around the world.

Artist’s Book Community Site is nominated in the category E. culture and heritage: http://www.naujasisknygnesys.lt/dalyviai/meninko-knygos-kureju-bendruomene/15 . You can help us with Your vote for our website artistsbook.lt through facebook.com account!

Artist’s Book Community Team

Artists’s book creator site was made because of the necessity to introduce international audience to the unique artworks of Lithuanian and foreigner artists, to provide more efficient ways for communicating and exhibiting their own artworks on the internet and in the exhibition halls.

Artist’s Book Community Team

THE WEB MARKETING ASSOCIATION is awarded Artist’s Book Creators Community site 2012 WEBAWARD For Outstanding Achievement in Web Development. AWARD for Non-Profit Standard of Excellence was assigned  for the convenience of the artists to use the services offered and the need to exhibit the art to the worldwide public. Doing this task, we also care about art fans, exposing the unique art virtual gallery 24 hours a day.

The Webby People’s Voice Awards polls are open from April 10th to April 26th and anyone can vote at pv.webbyawards.com

We’re in the  social media https://twitter.com/Artists_book and https://www.facebook.com/Artists.Books

Artist’s Book Creators Community

“From Traditional Artist’s Book Until Book Object”

Time: 6 April – 7 May 2013
Location: Artist’s Book Gallery

The Artist’s Book Gallery present the 3rd Exhibition – “From Traditional Artist’s Book Until Book Object”. In this Exhibition we show the most beautiful books of an artists from Germany, who participated in the six “International Artist’s Book Triennials Vilnius” from 1997 until 2012.

info: http://gallery.artistsbook.lt/

Roberta Vaigeltaite  “Songs of the Heart of Soreness”

Time: 1 March – 31 March 2013
Location: Artist’s Book Gallery

The Artist’s Book Gallery present the Exhibition “Songs of the Heart of Soreness” of an artist Roberta Vaigeltaite. She is most famous artist’s book maker in Lithuania. She create artist’s books more than 20 years and participated in many international artist’s book exhibitions in Lithuania and in abroad. She has made 14 personal exhibitions in Lithuania, France, Finland and The Netherlands. She participated in almost 200 exhibition in Lithuania, Germany, France, Italy, USA, Mexico, South Korea, Finland, Poland, Australia, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, U.K., Japan, Hungary, Scotland, Argentina, Macedonia, Serbia, Estonia, The Netherlands, Latvia and Norway.

info: http://gallery.artistsbook.lt/

More picture

The catalogue of the “6th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2012″

Theme: “Love”

Published by Circle “Bokartas”
Creative Director and Designer: Kestutis Vasiliunas
Printed: UAB “Balto”, Vilnius, Lithuania
Date: 2012

108 pages full in colour
Edition: 500 signed and numbered by curator of the Triennial
Size: folded 15,7 x 24 x 1,9 cm, unfolded 15,7 x 68 x 1,5 cm
Paper: Munken Pure 150 g/m2
Manual paper robbery and hand folding
Hand binding with rope
On the catalogue cover printed “L” in woodcut

Vilnius Book Fair invites to book into the space of reading and books.
The slogan is especially devoted for young readers, as the focus of the Fair will be the literature for teenagers. What books do they read?  What are the topical problems they are looking for in literature? What forms and ways of reading are attractive for them? All these and more questions will be highlighted in the discussion and seminar programme of the Book Fair.

Now we are going to The Webby Awards. The Webbys is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) .

All Webby Award Nominees are eligible to win the People’s Voice Award as chosen by the online voting public. Voting is a prime time to generate followers, fans and buzz. The Webby People’s Voice Awards polls are open from April 10th to April 26th and anyone can vote at pv.webbyawards.com

We invite You to support our initiative.

Dear Artists,

we want to invite you to make your personal or group artist’s book exhibition in our virtual Gallery. Featured and Supported Members of the Artist’s Book Community we will exhibit free. We have more than 10.000 visitor in one month, so why not to show your beautiful artist’s books for them?

In the virtual Gallery we plane to show not only personal artist’s book exhibitions, but also to show artist’s books from Germany, U.S.A., Denmark, Lithuania and other countries, and to discuses about traditions, schools and styles of making it.

Active Member – Artists who propagates Artist’s Books and helps actively for community.

Featured Member – free personal website and free support for selling Your artworks.

Supported Member – the same like Featured Member + free website with unique design and unique site name + advertising on Artist’s Book Community gallery and in social networks + free personal Book Store for selling Your Artworks + consultation and support + free participation in the next Triennials (if get selected by the jury) + free catalogue of the last Artist’s Book Triennial.

You can always change the membership.

More about membership options on Membership page >>

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Time: 1 February 2013 – 11 May 2013
Location : “San Francisco Center for the Book”, at 375 Rhode Island Street, San Francisco, U.S.A.

Curators: A project of Beau Beausoleil and Sarah Bodman.
Exhibition coordinated by Sas Colby

About the Exhibition:

In March 5th 2007, a car bomb was exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.

Book artists represent what is intangible between the pages of any book they create, the interior space that they enter, and from which they slowly fashion a book brings to the visible world the myriad emotions of any text, be it their own, or someone else’s.

The coalition asks each Book Artist who joins the project to complete three books (or other paper material) in the course of a year, books that reflect both the strength and fragility of books, but also show the endurance of the ideas within them. We seek constructions of all the various vessels of the printed word, ones that pay homage to the truth that can rest between any two covers. We are looking for work that reflects both the targeted attack on this “street of the booksellers” as well as the ultimate futility of those who try to erase thought.

The inventory of al-Mutanabbi Street was as diverse as the Iraqi population, including literature of both Iraq and the Middle East, history, political theory, popular novels, scholarly works, religious tracts, technical books, poetry, mysteries; even stationery and blank school notebooks could be purchased on this street, as well as children’s books, comics, and magazines. Arabic was of course the predominate language but books in Farsi, French, German, and English were also represented. Because books have their own journeys, ones quite unknown to us, I imagine there were a few books in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, or Italian, as well as classic Greek and Latin, Hindi, or even Russian. Your own text for this project can reflect the multiplicity of this linguistic crossroads.

This project is both a lament and a commemoration of the singular power of words. We ask that the work move within these parameters. We hope the books created will use al-Mutanabbi and its printers, writers, booksellers, and readers, as a touchstone. We hope that these books will make visible the literary bridge that connects us, made of words and images that move back and forth between the readers in Iraq and ourselves. These books will show the commonality of al-Mutanabbi Street with any street, anywhere, that holds a bookstore or cultural institution.

And that this attack (part of a long history of attacking the printed word) was an attack on us all.

The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition is not an anti-war project, nor is it a healing project. The coalition feels that until we truly see what happened on this one winding street of booksellers and readers, on this one day in Baghdad, until we understand all the implications of an attack on the printed word and its writers, printers, booksellers and readers, until we see that this is our street, until then, we cannot truly move forward.

Info: https://sfcb.org/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/al-mutanabbi-street-starts-here

Dear Artists,

I want to thank You for being together, for Your support and participation in the 6th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2012.
I wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I wish You joy, health, LOVE and creativity!

Sincerely,

Kestutis Vasiliunas
Chief of the Circle “Bokartas”
curator of the Triennial

108 pages full in colour.
Edition: 500 signed and numbered by curator of the Triennial.
Size: folded 15,7 x 24 x 1,9 cm, unfolded 15,7 x 68 x 1,5 cm.
Paper: Munken Pure 150 g/m2.
Manual paper robbery and hand folding.
Hand binding with rope.
On the catalogue cover printed “L” in woodcut.

On this time I return the books and send the catalogues for participants of the 6th Triennial. Soon all artists who have sent their works for the “6th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2012″ will receive the catalogues.

Feedbacks about our catalogue:

“I just received my copy of the Triennial Catalogue along with my returned work. I was very happy to be included in this exhibition.
The catalogue is beautiful and quite impressive. Thank you very much!
I would be very glad to participate in any of  your future projects.”
Ron Prost, U.S.A.

“I received your wonderful catalogue!
Thanks very, very much, for your great work in to make this ‘artist’ catalogue!
Also, thanks for your great work in organize and propose the Triennial.”
Loretta Cappanera, Italy

“We just received the package with our “&” book and the
wonderful posters and catalogues from the 6th International Artist’s
Book Triennial Vilnius 2012. It is such a lovely and meaningful
remembrance of the LOVE exhibition.”
Annie Zeybekoglu & Ania Gilmore, U.S.A.

“The catalogue is wonderful, also thanks for it!”
Brigitte Gmachreich-Jünemann, Germany

“The catalog is very fine (as always) and also the quality of the works inside.
Congratulations for the great job you always do for the triennial.”
Silvia Ungaro, Italy

“I got my artbook and the catalogue yesterday. Thank You!
I must say, that I am very happy and pround because my artbook has been in such an interesting, beautiful and great exhibition.”
Synnöve Dickhoff, Finland

“The excellent catalogue and my book entry for the 6th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2012, arrived safely in the  post last week.
It is a pleasure to be part of your Triennial and I am most impressed with the catalogue. How lovely that it is hand made!
I look forward to future collaborations as artists, and to participating in the 7th Triennial.
With warm regards and a happy and productive New Year 2013″
Mirabel FitzGerald, Australia

“Also my thanks for the beautiful catalogue – it is a real work of art and a very special artist book. Well done on a great project”
Su Grierson, Scotland

“Thank you very much for sending back my art book and a very big thanks for the wonderful catalogue, I love it very much.”
Gerda Ritzmann, Switzerland

“WOW this was pink!
I have the pleasure to announce that the catalog from LOVE has arrived
safely. It is absolutely gorgeous and very pink indeed I love it! And what work
I am stunned and inspired. Thank you so much Kestutis ”
Marianne Laimer, Sweden

“This week I received the catalogue of 6th Triennial. Thank you for that.
A nice collection of interpretations of love.”
Frans Baake, The Nertherlands

“Jean showed me the last catalogue of the 6th Book Art Triennial. It is a real unique book with many interesting works, a phantastic design and a special binding that certainly was a lot of work. I also like the paper, beautiful.”
Katharina Pieper, Germany

“Thanks for sending the catalog. It is beautiful. Some fascinating books too.”
James Reid-Cunningham, U.S.A.

“What a nice surprise was the catalogus. Beautiful books and a pleasure to receive the catalogus.”
Wietske van Til, The Nertherlands

“Thank you very much for this wonderful Catalogue with all these lovely artists works of love in form of book objects. It is so beautiful. I think everybody loved this theme too, it is to see.”
Gisela Oberbeck, Germany

Thank you, dear artists, for warm words. I always trying to make something special, new and interesting with the catalogue. I like to play with typography, colour and paper for going out from “normal” book to an experimental solution of the catalogue.

Kestutis Vasiliunas, curator of the Triennial and designer of the catalogue

Book: “Noah’s Ark”
Artist: Evaldas Mikalauskis
Publisher: Circle “Bokartas”

The book “Noah’s Ark” won the main prize – “Algirdas Steponavicius Award” in the exhibition “Art of Book” for the best illustrations, made by artist Evaldas Mikalauskis. In time 20 November – 10 December 2012 illustrations are on display in the exhibition in the Gallery “Arka”, Vilnius. The book “Noah’s Ark” has won also a Diploma as one of the most beautiful book for children in the “Vilnius Book Fair 2012″.

Evaldas Mikalauskis is famous Lithuanian artist. He makes artist’s books, prints, illustrations.

“Noah’s Ark” is a wonderful book for children with excellent illustrations, painted on wooden boards, by the artist Evaldas Mikalauskis. The text of the Bible is adapted for children by Aldona Vasiliuniene. This exclusive book is bounded with canvas. “Noah’s Ark” is the first book of a series of Bible stories for children. This is a non-profit project, which will include the best book artists. This project should help children to love God.

Project manager and designer – Kestutis Vasiliunas

Artist Evaldas Mikalauskis on the opening of the exhibition “Art of Book”.

the “6th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2012″ is closed.

Thank you for participating in the Triennial. Without you the 6th Artist’s Book Triennial would have been not so good like it was.

We started to return your artist’s books with the catalogue. If you changed your address, please, inform us.

We send you best wish for further success in your creativity as well as wishes for our further collaboration. We wish you to participate in the “7th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2015″.

The Triennial was showed:
3 February – 2 March 2012, “Scuola Internazionale di Grafica”, Venice, Italy;
15 March – 18 March 2012, Leipzig Book Fair, Germany;
12 April – 28 April 2012, Gallery “Titanikas”, Vilnius, Lithuania;
27 September – 4 November 2012, Kloster Bentlage, Rheine, Germany;

International Jury:
Joseph Johannes Visser, The Netherlands;
Hanne Matthiesen,  Denmark;
Deirdre Kelly, Italy / U.K.;
Kestutis Vasiliunas, Lithuania.

Organiser of the Triennial: Circle “Bokartas”

In Cooperation with:
Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania;
Kloster Bentlage gGmbH, Germany;
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice, Italy;
IAKH – Internationale Ausstellung für Künstlerbücher und Handpressendrucke, Leipzig, Germany.

Sponsor: The Culture Support Foundation, Lithuania

Sincerely Yours,

Kestutis Vasiliunas
Curator of the Triennial

 1,000 Artists’ Books: Exploring the Book as Art
by Sandra Salamony, Peter & Donna Thomas

Published by: “Quarry Books”, U.S.A.
Publication Date: June 1, 2012

The book is a timeless art form, one that is as alive today as ever before, and artists continue to explore and explode the boundaries of what a book is and can be. In this beautiful collection, you will experience close-up various aspects of hand-crafted books: covers, bindings, scrolls, folded and origami structures and books made from found objects. You will find richly illustrated and calligraphed pages as well as books created from a variety of printed processes. Ingenuity and creativity abounds in this carefully curated collection of both historically important and modern works.

About the authors:

Sandra Salamony is a professional book designer. She has authored, co-authored, and curated several books on artisan topics. She lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

Peter and Donna Thomas are book artists and coauthors of More Making Books by Hand. They live in Santa Cruz, California. They participated in the 2nd 3rd and 4th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius.

2012 WEBAWARD For Outstanding Achievement in Web Development.

WINNING ENTRY
Artist’s Book Creators Community

AWARD
Non-Profit Standard of Excellence

About WebAward.org

Since 1997, the Web Marketing Association’s annual WebAward Competition has been setting the standard of excellence for Website development. Independent expert judges from around the world review sites in 96 industries. The best are recognized with a WebAward which helps interactive professionals promote themselves, their companies, and their best work to the outside world. The WebAward Competition is the premier award recognition program for Web developers and marketers worldwide.

Richard Noyce (for Lithotage 2012, München, 1st September 2012)

A PRINT? WHAT’S THAT?

I am not sure what printmaking is anymore, well not exactly. I write books and articles about printmaking, I have travelled widely to talk about it, to meet artists and printmakers in the studios and workshops and to see exhibitions of printmaking; I have attended printmaking conferences and participated in juries for printmaking competitions. But I can no longer be certain what printmaking is, not exactly. This admission might perhaps come as a surprise, or might even raise questions about my suitability as a person to write, speak and sit in judgment on the subject. I have to say from the outset that I have not gone through some sort of dark night of the soul, neither have I experienced a crisis of conscience – far from it. Instead I believe that, with the continuing and rapid evolution of the contemporary visual arts, printmaking is a stronger and more varied art form now than ever before. But it continues to shape-shift with alacrity and to take on numerous alternative forms. And, as always, the basic human need to attempt to define things and nail them down has led to the use of the term, ‘alternative printmaking’. And, as always, this has led to muddier rather than clearer waters.

So, the first question should be, ‘alternative to what?’ and I ask this for a very good reason. An alternative route between two places will still get you from point A to point B, will cover different ground and perhaps take more or less time, offering different experiences along the way, but still getting you to the same destination. In a similar way the observational and imaginative power of the artist, mobilised through her or his choice of alternative mediums and materials, leads to the creation of an original work of art that can be shared with others. Despite the efforts of those who set themselves up as being the ‘art establishment’ at various times in the past, there have always been artists who have defied the establishment, taking the various visual art forms in new and often extreme directions. The richness of the history of the global visual arts scene is in many ways the result of the work of the rebels rather than the traditionalists. Printmaking has for many centuries offered alternative ways of making, and being alternative is nothing new: neither is the historically undeniable fact that printmaking has always been a difficult subject to define or nail down. Many among the ranks of Printmakers, despite the image that some choose to present to the world, are revolutionary, sometimes anarchic, and choose ways of working that are different, even radically so. What is more, Printmakers have a long history of questioning the status quo and shaking a fist at established society. In short, ‘Alternative Printmaking’ has a very long and honourable history of making work that is different, challenging, revolutionary and therefore ‘alternative’, (even if that term was not used) to what went before and had become accepted as the orthodox form of the medium.

Paul Croft, a noted British printmaker and Tamarind Master Printer who also teaches Printmaking at Aberystwyth University in Wales, organised a well-received exhibition in 2007 with the title, ‘Stone-Plate-Grease-Water’ which was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in Machynlleth, and later in London. This was a very international exhibition that demonstrated beyond question the versatility of lithography. After the official opening I followed two smartly dressed older Welsh ladies – handbags and hats much in evidence in the middle of that Sunday in chapel-strewn Mid Wales – as they viewed the exhibition. They stopped at the first work and declared it most emphatically to be a watercolour – and then looked at the title card and exclaimed that it was a lithograph. The next work was hailed by them as a beautiful drawing – and once again they expressed surprise that it was a lithograph. After repeating a similar dialogue for the next few works, one turned to the other and said, ‘Ah, so they’re all lithographs! What a versatile medium, we must find out more!‘ and went to buy a catalogue. Lithography gained two new fans that day, and many more during the run of the exhibition. As people who are connected with printmaking, we are not too surprised by this, but isn’t it wonderful what can be achieved, given the right situation?

Printmaking is certainly an alternative means of creating an image to that offered by Painting or Drawing. While it lacks the immediacy of a pencil mark on paper, or the directness of a brush stroke on canvas, it offers one crucial difference, and that is the inherent possibility of creating a reproducible image, one that can be produced in an edition, with each print being almost precisely identical to the others in the edition. It is true that paintings and drawings can now be reproduced in astonishing detail by the ‘giclée’ process, which can be very deceptive. On a visit to Vienna, a few years ago, I visited the Albertina museum with the ambition of seeing their collection of works by Albrecht Dürer. I walked into the hushed gallery and saw his masterpieces, including, ‘The Young Hare‘ and ‘The Great Piece of Turf’, hanging on the soft red walls. From a distance of a few feet they looked as wonderful as I expected them to, until I looked more closely at the labels and read that the originals were on exhibition elsewhere and that what I was looking at were digital reproductions, albeit of an extremely high quality! Paying homage, in this case, turned to disappointment. ‘Giclée’ prints are essentially photographic reproductions, and lack the subtleties and nuances that art lovers look for. As an aside, the French verb ‘gicler’ from which the printing term is derived means ‘to squirt’ and is more colloquially applied to the means by which male cats mark out their territory! But, as opposed to such photographic reproductions, true prints offer something different, something distinct, and something far more complex, with that essence that comes from the process by which an image is transferred from a matrix onto a surface, generally paper, resulting in a numbered edition of prints. I will turn later to the problematic area of the matrix in digital and other forms of printmaking, and for the present will remain with this image > matrix > paper > numbered edition process.

The generally agreed lineage of printmaking in this sense is from stone engraving and relief, to wood engraving and relief, to etching and metal engraving (including mezzotint), to lithography and planography, to screen-printing or serigraphy, and now to digital mediums. The evolution of this lineage occupied several thousand years, and is closely reflective of the process of the evolution of technology, with which printmaking has always been closely allied. Once again, the present symbiotic (although some would say incestuous) relationship between printmaking and technology is nothing new.

All the traditional processes, with the exception of screen printing, require that the artist, or the block, plate, or stone maker, produces the image in reverse on a matrix that is then prepared and inked according to the technique being used, before being placed on the bed of a press so that the image can be transferred under pressure to a sheet of paper, or by the simpler process of the application of hand pressure using a baren, or the back of a wooden spoon. Prints made in all these ways have a particular allure to collectors and art lovers – as well as to artists. There is something about the processes by which the ink is transferred to the paper that gives traditional prints their special quality, their attraction, and their worth: or to use a word in the same sense in which Walter Benjamin used it, their ‘aura’.

Prints made within this spectrum of techniques, and combination or variation of techniques, do not necessarily all conform to a uniform style or approach, or a tightly defined technique. There are further alternatives within each of the conventionally accepted forms of traditional printmaking, and such alternatives have been developed throughout the long history of this art form and across many countries. In fact, it is the persistent presence of a willingness to experiment with techniques and materials, and to develop alternative forms, that has served printmaking so very well, giving the art form a vitality and range of variations that continue to intrigue and amaze. It is not surprising therefore that it is a visual art form that has become so widespread in world culture as to be endemic. And it starts with something very simple, something that is commonly known among children and those who teach them in many parts of the world: the humble print made by slicing a potato or other vegetable in half, then carving lines, or holes, or patterns, in the cut surface before dipping it in ink, or paint, and pressing it against paper – there it is, a print, capable of being reprinted over and over, of being combined with other images, other colours! This is printmaking in its simplest form, reduced to its essence.

Beyond this simple form printmaking techniques become steadily more complex, involving processes, techniques, materials and technologies that, taken together present a bewildering range of alternative choices and permutations for an artist. There are some practitioners of printmaking who get very hung up on working within this range of alternatives, becoming expert in one or another of the techniques they choose. The knowledge and experience they build up is of course valuable to those with whom they share it: teaching, whether formal or informal, has always been very much part of printmaking – the master/apprentice relationship still has real value and the relationship between the artist and the master printmaker has become one of the core strengths of printmaking. But, valuable and fascinating though it may be, is the development of a skill in the use of a technique all there is, and is this enough? I am reminded of the reference to medieval theologians who, it is said, argued endlessly about how may angels could dance on the head of a pin: intellectually and spiritually absorbing, no doubt, but in the end utterly irrelevant to the business of everyday life. Thus it is with prints that present a masterly skill in technique but offer no deeper resonance, no contemplation of the human condition, or no indication of the relationship of the artist to the world in which she or he lives. If printmakers wish to make such prints and collectors wish to buy them, then that is of course OK – but it is never going to be more than a transaction of limited lasting worth.

***

At this point the important question arises concerning the problem of the value of precise definition. I have a degree of wariness, of scepticism even, about the value of definition when applied to what a person is, or does. As human beings we are far too complex to be rigidly defined, and such exclusive description tends too often to miss the subtleties and oddities that mark us as individuals. So, the question arises: do you want to be defined as a printmaker, or even more tightly as an etcher, lithographer or wood engraver, or do you want to be known as a human being who is also an artist who happens to use printmaking techniques in the making of art? And if so, what do you mean by the definition you choose? This is not intended to be pedantic, but to go to the core of what it is that we do.

So, how does the dictionary help? The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1982 edition) defines ‘art’ (firstly) as: ‘skill, especially human skill as opposed to nature; ability in skilful execution as an object in itself; cunning; imitative or imaginative skill applied to design, as in paintings, architecture, etc.’ It also defines ‘artist’ (firstly) as ‘one who practices one of the fine arts, especially painting’. Curiously, the word ‘printmaker’ is not defined, at least not in the 1982 edition! But the current online edition of the Oxford Dictionary defines ‘printmaker’ as ‘a person who makes pictures or designs by printing them from specially prepared plates or blocks.’ So, following this definition strictly, someone who makes prints by other means such as screen-printing or digital processes is not a ‘printmaker’.  This will come as welcome relief to those in the traditional printmaking community who have only recently got round to accepting, albeit it grudgingly, that screen printing might perhaps be a valid form, and who still consider digital prints to be well outside the limits of acceptability, if not actually the work of the powers of darkness! All of which comes back to ‘Alternative Printmaking’ and what it can be said to mean.

Over the past decade or more I have explored contemporary printmaking and the international printmaking community through journeys to a number of very different countries and also through the medium of the Internet. My two most recent book titles both incorporate the word ‘edge’, and reading those books will reveal some of the complexities and paradoxes that this word entails. What is certain however is that contemporary printmaking is in very good health, that it continues to expand and diversify and, importantly, that it continues to defy exact and scientific definition. All of these qualities offer artists and students an extremely wide range of possible techniques and approaches, as well as many different opportunities for sharing the results. Further than this, the number of international conferences, exhibitions and events that are generated by contemporary print continues to increase. I suggest that there is no other single visual arts form in which those who produce the work, write about it, or collect it, can have such a wide range of ways in which to get together at events such as ‘Lithotage’, to look, to learn and, importantly, to share ideas. For all these reasons contemporary printmaking continues to exert a strong fascination in a growing number of people.

As the notion of the print and printmaking is unpacked a whole new set of questions arises. Can an image produced through screen printing, in which the intermediary image is a stencil transferred by hand or photographic means the right way round (and not reversed) onto a soft fabric, be a print? What about a stencil print applied to the wall of a building, or a roadway in a city? What about a digital image on paper, or on a fabric or plastic surface? What about a digital image produced on vinyl and applied to the side of a vehicle? Or an image produced on perforated vinyl the size of a building and applied to its windows? Or an image transferred onto a three dimensional ceramic object? Or a series of images produced in a digital sequence and projected on a wall, or on the exterior of a building? What indeed about a digital photograph – either as an image created within the camera, or in which the image has been subsequently electronically manipulated – can this be considered a valid form of printmaking? Finally, what about a series of digital images produced as a slideshow, or even as a film, and copied to be distributed on CD, or DVD, or as an electronic file – can this be considered as a print? After all, we are used to speaking about ‘photographic prints’ or ‘prints of a film’. All of these, and other new forms and hybrids, are becoming increasingly accepted as printmaking on an extended scale, and many of them are now routinely accepted in international competitions and exhibitions of printmaking. Each of them is, at least, a visual image that can be reproduced through one of the broad variety of printmaking techniques, and each of them has a beginning in the eye and mind of the artist, an intermediate stage in the means of production, and a final result that can be viewed by others.

As a side note: The appearance of photography in the mid-19^th century signalled – it was claimed – the death of painting. Since then, in various contexts and at various times, photography has been the ‘enfant terrible’ of the art world, being accused, vilified, praised, ignored, celebrated and finally, one hopes, assimilated. Consider, for example, this quotation: ‘When photography was invented artists thought it would bring ruin to art but it is shown that photography has been an ally on art, an educator of taste more powerful than a hundred academies of Design would have been…’ If asked to guess the date of the quotation, few would get it right – but it dates back to an article on, ‘Photography and Chromolithography’ in ‘The Philadelphia Photographer’ in April 1868. And yet, painting is still not dead, refusing to die. Closer to the present time the rise of digital print has caused a similar crisis – for those who like to create and maintain crisis as a means of validating the status quo, and their part in it. The fact remains that digital photography has become completely embedded in the contemporary lives of at least half the people on this planet, and cannot be ignored.

However, what of monoprints or monotypes or unique prints on paper? Can these be considered as prints since they are the result of the use of printmaking processes, with the image prepared on a surface, to be transferred in reverse on to paper by the application of pressure? The answer, so far, has to be yes, but it is not intended to produce such works in an edition – they are one-offs, they are original works of art, so where does this leave them, and what are they? There are so many questions and so few answers; and all of them arising from the extraordinary range of ways in which artists in their search for expression can utilise printmaking processes, producing their work in editions and making it available to larger numbers of people at prices that more people can afford.

In my explorations, both real and virtual, I find that the range of alternatives is growing. So much so in fact that it is tempting to say that all forms of printmaking are alternative! But, on the assumption that engraving, etching and lithography are the conventional forms, being based on the reversed image > matrix > paper process, what can be included in the term, ‘alternative printmaking’? I would suggest, for a start, screen printing, and its street art relative the stencil or ‘szablon’; I would add in monoprints and monotypes; and of course digital prints, as well as the newly emerging form of 3D digital objects, not forgetting time-based digital products such as photography, film and animation. In addition to this I would include all forms of printmaking, both traditional and alternative, in which there are unusual combinations of techniques, the application to unusual materials, prints made at extremely large (or an extremely small) scale or incorporated into installations. In all of these forms there is the element of reproducibility, or at least the potential for this. That is for a beginning – there are no doubt other alternatives – but it is an impressive list nonetheless.

The matrix, as generally and conventionally understood, is a physical and material intermediary between the artist’s idea and the final image. The mystique of the matrix is central to the conventional and historical wisdom of printmaking. In exhibitions in which the matrix, be it plate, block or stone, is exhibited alongside the print, it can serve a most useful object lesson to those looking at it – the relationship between matrix and print becomes instantly clear. But how to consider the image applied to the fabric of the screen, or the stencil, or the digital file stored on a computer hard drive, or even the digital photograph? Can these be considered as an extension of the idea of the matrix? Or is the true matrix always within the imagination of the artist? (One could, at this point, think about the role of the imagination in the films in ‘The Matrix Trilogy’…)

But in terms of printmaking, is the matrix located within that creative nexus, that intellectual point of decision through which the broad conceptual thinking about the work in the mind of the artist is brought to a point of focus, so that it can be turned into a physical matrix by the tools and materials in the artist’s hands, or into a virtual matrix on a hard drive through the camera, scanner, tablet or keyboard that the artist uses, and beyond that used to be reproduced in physical or virtual form? If this more inclusive definition is used then the whole world of possibilities in printmaking is opened wide. And that is where it all starts to become one of the most fascinating forms of contemporary human expression.

To illustrate some aspects of the current variety of work that artists are making within the broader definition of printmaking, I will show a selection of images of work by a few of the artists I am including in my forthcoming book, ‘Printmaking Off the Beaten Track’, which is due for publication in September 2013. The book will feature 56 artists from 25 countries along a broad arc from Indonesia to Finland, via the Middle East, and one or two other countries. ‘Off the Beaten Track’ refers to places that are rarely if ever featured strongly in exhibitions and writing about contemporary printmaking, but which are nonetheless places in which interesting work is being done. The selection of artists, and through that the list of countries, is idiosyncratic, and largely as a result of my personal subjective choice. Among the artists are some who continue to live in the countries of their birth, and others who for political or personal reasons have chosen to live elsewhere. A number of countries are places where there has been, or still is, conflict in the form of civil or international war, or disruption following the ending of communist rule, or conflict resulting from the friction between the growing influence of fundamentalist faiths and the conflicting desires for modernity. The beaten track, like the edge, is a transitory place undergoing constant redefinition.

And, in conclusion:

Printmaking – let it never be forgotten – is art, and contemporary printmaking is contemporary art. Printmaking is not something else, it feeds on and feeds the same things as other forms of visual art. It is just another medium through which someone’s ideas, passions, fears, desires and emotions are expressed in a visible form to be shared with others. I believe that Printmaking continues to change with changing circumstances and changing technology, as it has done for centuries. I believe also that we are in a most fortunate position; one in which all mediums of printmaking, whether traditional or digital, used singly or in combination, can be equally valid, and equally respected. Contemporary printmaking is no longer content with staying in the obscure corners into which some commentators pushed it in the past, and in which some printmakers were content to let it stay. It is a vibrant and continually evolving set of mediums that defies safe definition. Paradoxically, while much printmaking continues to take place at the edges, where there is a greater sense of risk and danger, it is also moving resolutely towards the centre of the contemporary visual arts. I believe that in the coming years printmaking will no longer be seen as a poor relation, but will be front and centre where it can do what it has always been good at doing – celebrating the creative potential of artists all over the world, revealing the deeper truths in society, and asking those questions that need constantly to be asked, but which many shy away from. ‘Who are we, where do we come from, how should we relate to others, and where are we going?’

It will, I believe, be a fascinating experience.

Richard Noyce

Wales, July-August 2012

Theme of the Triennial: Love

Time: 27 September – 4 November 2012
Location: Kloster Bentlage, Rheine, Germany

The part of the “6th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2012”  now are exhibited in the “2nd International Printmaking Symposium” in Bentlge, in Germany.

In the Exhibition

Roberto Gianinetti near his artist’s book

Katsutoshi Yuasa, Erik Kok, Kestutis Vasiliunas and Mari Girkelidse in the Exhibition

In the Exhibition

Visitors in the Exhibition

Roberta Vaigeltaite – wall book

In the Printmaking Symposium curator of the Triennial Kestutis Vasiliunas has made presentation -  “International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius”.

With moderator Professor Emeritus Walter Jule

During the presentation

Presentation

In Cooperation with:
Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania;
Kloster Bentlage gGmbH, Germany;
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice, Italy;
IAKH – Internationale Ausstellung für Künstlerbücher und Handpressendrucke,

Leipzig, Germany

Organiser of the Triennial:
Circle “Bokartas”

Director of the Triennial in Bentlage:
Mr. Martin Rehkopp

Curator:
Kestutis Vasiliunas

Sponsors:
Stiftung zur Förderung von Kloster Bentlage, Germany
The Culture Support Foundation, Lithuania