Atlanta Printmakers Studio takes care of some Pressing Matters

The presses are running at the Atlanta Printmakers Studio. At 10 in the morning, APS executive director Kathy Garrou casually pumps her foot on the pedal of one of the studio’s antique letterpresses and the massive century-old, cast-iron machine glides into motion like it was built yesterday. The letterpress is a quiet but intimidating tool, hardly making a sound as it moves in a swift dance of spinning wheels and rhythmic repetition that recalls a time when factories were filled with Rube Goldberg-like contraptions rather than the slick, streamlined and sterile machines of today. Imagine the virtual tools of Adobe Photoshop exploded into a physical, hands-on space that feels equal parts urban bohemia and Charles Dickens-era factory and you’ve got the Atlanta Printmakers Studio.

Most of the antiquated presses and tools in the sprawling Metropolitan Avenue warehouse space were donated by businesses that could no longer turn a profit using the out-of-date machines. Yet, as a new group exhibition at Gwinnett’s Hudgens Center for the Arts plainly shows, APS is attracting artists whose work is anything but antiquated. Pressing Matters: Atlanta Printmakers Studio Annual Members Exhibition reveals an environment of cross-pollinating disciplines, styles, and printmaking techniques applied to works that range from minimalist typeset prints to complex combinations of collage, screen printing and painting.

Since opening the studio in 2006, the letterpresses have functioned as something like a gateway drug for new printmakers. As Garrou explains, “We have people who come in who have never done any printmaking before — maybe they have an accounting background — but they have an interest in letterpress and want to learn that. People at that level start by taking a class and a lot of the people who take the letterpress class then follow through by becoming a renter.”

The letterpresses are hardly the only resource or reason that artists are drawn to APS, though. Behind Garrou, two fresh-faced interns are busy cleaning an array of oddly shaped tools with mineral spirits. APS’ quarterly internship program allows interns to earn college credit while also getting access and experience with the studio’s resources, which include everything from an etching press to bookbinding frames to hand rollers to a screen exposure unit and power sprayer.

That diversity of techniques is evident in Pressing Matters. Hannah Skoonberg’s subtle, fragile-looking print “Devotional” creates an expressive, spiritual vision out of a single black and leafless tree. Joey Hannaford’s minimalist typeset prints evoke the clean lines and carefully balanced colors common in graphic design but are nicely textured by the imprecision of hand printing. Richard Gere, SCAD professor and APS board member, lets a variety of techniques and textures run free in his chaotic, colorful works. Not all of the exhibit’s work is great — the show includes some artists that are clearly just beginning to explore printmaking techniques — but that diversity of talent is an expression of the studio’s openness to all levels of artists.

Stacie Uhinck Rose’s works are a highlight of Pressing Matters. Rose’s paintings subtly incorporate screen-printing into spatially disoriented compositions of gestural brushwork and collage. Rose relocated to Atlanta from San Francisco a few years ago and only started working with APS in the last six months.

Standing in the studio with Garrou, Rose says that part of APS’ draw is getting away from the isolation of her home studio. “When I lived in San Francisco, I worked in a warehouse with other artists. It naturally occurred that I met other artists and gallery people. My studio is attached to my house now, so I don’t have that social quality there,” says Rose.

The interaction with other artists at APS has created new opportunities for Rose to expand her practice. “One of the other artists here who is also a painter, Terri Dilling, gave me a monoprinting tutorial, showed me how to use that press and gave me some good advice. So now I’m planning on some work with mixed media monoprint drawings on paper,” says Rose.

Though Rose is taking her exploration of the studio’s resources slowly, she’s already deeply engaged with the conceptual implications of using printmaking in her paintings. “The expressive gestural movement of the scribble, then taking it and making it a repetitive image — that has a lot to with memory and the quality of memory and how we perceive the past in a time-space way,” she says. “The unusual spatial qualities of coming forward and going back, the way we place things in our recollections. I’m still exploring that.”

Rose’s experience exemplifies the collaborative creative environment APS can foster. Pressing Matters’ most compelling artworks reveal a similar willingness to experiment with technique. The standout works from Rose, Skoonberg, and others share a subtle but integral use of printmaking to buttress a larger, separate artistic vision. The Atlanta Printmakers’ Studio’s myriad presses, bulky, cast iron and foreboding, are the sort of resources that rarely make it into the home studios of working artists, but the artists in Pressing Matters seem to be right at home in their work.