Guest artist in new Range series bring printmaking expertise to Spokane

Printmaking is like the gawky teenager of the fine arts mediums – highly creative, but often misunderstood.

To inspire local audiences, and maybe even rectify a few false impressions, nationally known artist and art professor James Bailey will travel to Spokane next week from the University of Montana to talk about printmaking.

Bailey is the first featured artist for the new Range Visiting Artist Series (formerly the Visiting Artist Lecture Series), presented by the recent partnership of Eastern Washington University, Spokane Falls Community College, Gonzaga University’s Jundt Art Museum and Terrain.

So what is a common misconception about printmaking? “I think there’s this notion that even with a matrix, if the artist didn’t actually print it themselves, then people question if it’s really legitimate,” Bailey said.

The “matrix” is the starting point for printmaking and has nothing to do with Keanu Reeves. The matrix is the surface, plate or block that holds and guides the ink to create an image, usually by pressing a sheet of paper against it, though cloth, metal or ceramics can also be used. (The potato you carved as a kid to stamp images? That was your matrix.)

Transferring the image can be done by hand or with a printing press. For the past 24 years Bailey has even used a steamroller to help schoolchildren of all ages create and print their own large, cloth banners for Day of the Dead festivals in Montana and elsewhere.

A print is the image made from the matrix. Printing techniques include relief, as with woodcut or linocut; intaglio such as engraving and etching; and planographic such as lithography, montotyping and digital techniques. There’s also collagraphy, viscosity printing and foil imaging. Not to mention the combinations of two or more of these techniques. To further complicate matters, printing processes can be complex and messy, using massive machinery, various toxic inks and chemical solvents.

The winding journey to a final print can be a highly collaborative experience for printmakers. This is not very different from how Renaissance painters used teams of artists to create their prints, Bailey said. In the 15th century, after original drawings, or matrices, were created by the designer, master carvers would step in to cut the blocks, and master printers would apply the inks.

“You don’t expect the architect to be the same guy that’s laying the brick, or the car designer to manufacture the parts,” Bailey said. “In all these other disciplines we accept the paradigm that the designer is different from the guy who manufactures the final product.”

That artistic collaboration necessary to create prints is a major attraction for Bailey. “It’s nice being in a kind of cooperative group of people who have similar aesthetic ideas,” Bailey said. “I don’t want to be the lonely artist working in solitude.”

Bailey also enjoys the sheer physicality of printmaking, whether it’s “cutting a block or drawing a lithograph or moving a stone around,” he said. “I like the tools and the presses and the different things you have to learn.”

Bailey created the MATRIX Press and its visiting artists program at Montana. Students can learn to master the tools of the trade and hone their professional skills by assisting established printmakers who are in residence there.

Bailey’s own work is as varied as printmaking itself. His “Bubble Head” series are mostly comic self-portraiture, depicting a impish character who sometimes engages in bad behavior like drinking and smoking.

In his “Water” series, he drew himself as a stylized head, floating just above water, being inundated by too much information and demands for his attention. Those autobiographical works are what Bailey called “shouting,” while another recent series of prints called “Maps,” he explained, “whispers about the landscape.”

Karen Kaiser, the curator of education at Gonzaga University’s Jundt Art Museum, said Bailey was her first choice for kicking off the new Range Visiting Artist Series. “Most people will never be exposed to what printmaking is unless they go to school for the fine arts,” Kaiser said. “It’s really important for people not to make distinctions between art disciplines.”

Gonzaga’s print collection boasts more than 4,500 works, including prints by Albrecht Durer, Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt van Rijn, and, of course, James Bailey. As with all prints, each print in Gonzaga’s vault is considered to be an original, not a copy. The techniques the printmakers employed, and the choices they made to express their intent, are the magical space where fine art was created.

Bailey’s visit includes two artist talks Wednesday and Thursday and a panel discussion with local printmakers Thursday evening. Attendees to the panel will also have the opportunity to participate in a hands-on printing workshop before and after the event on a first-come, first-served basis.