Experimental Printmaking Institute: Places, Prints, Hosts, and Helps Over Summer Break

EASTON, P.A. – As summer draws to a close, EPI ushers in a wealth of achievements from May to  August 2010. The non-profit art institute had not a moment of rest during its campus break at Lafayette College.

Prints placed in permanent collection at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum include a recently-printed edition by Chakia Booker, who is new to the EPI family. Her print included mixed media using innovative techniques that capture her signature style. Booker held an exhibition at Lafayette College’s Williams Visual Arts Building last spring. Old friends whose prints were also selected include Sam Gilliam and Richard Anuszkiewicz. Gilliam is an internationally recognized sculptor and friend of the Lafayette College Art Department, while Anuszkiewicz is a leading figure in the Op-movement and renowned student of artist Joseph Albers. All three acted as Grossman artists-in-residence at Lafayette College.

Professor Curlee Raven Holton, Director of EPI, in collaboration with renowned artist and friend Faith Ringgold produced a limited edition print in honor of Ringgold’s retrospective exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY and Ringgold’s eightieth birthday celebration. It is a serigraph print taken from one of Ringgold’s images from the 1960s.

15 students traveled to EPI from Washington, D.C. as part of the Higher Achievement Program, which chose Lafayette College as a destination to help transform its academically-ambitious participants into college-bound men and women. These 15 students spent part of their time on campus with Holton, artists Jase Clark and MaryAnne Miller, and graduate student Kandice Fields (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia), watching a relief print demonstration, participating in a serigraph demonstration and activity, as well as creating their own artists’ books. “I thought it was a really important role for us to play in broadening their horizons and giving them something to aspire to,” Miller said.