Shoalhaven Printmakers exhibition, 4-5 December 1999
(see gallery below)
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Shoalhaven Printmakers exhibition, 4-5 December 1999 |
| Home | Machteld Hali and Shoalhaven Printmakers are celebrating Christmas and the end of the millennium with an exhibition in Berry December 4-5.
Annie Schlebaum (Ashbolt) will open the show at 6pm on Saturday, December 4 at 11 Station Street, Berry. Gallery hours will be 10am-4pm, 4-5. To view the works after these dates, contact Machteld Hali. Hali’s explosion onto the Shoalhaven arts scene has generated a great deal of curiosity about her preferred medium, collography. Linda Dening (workshop organiser), Kerrina Swords, Helen Nugent, Karen Crawford, Nick Powell, Rona Walker, Jane Bange and Suzanne Chick attended her inaugural workshop on the weekend of 27-28 August at her studio in Station Street, Berry. There she inducted the delighted artists step by careful step into its mysteries. Although it is one of the most sophisticated printing methods, collography is based on nothing more technical than a piece of cardboard - normally associated with framing pictures behind glass. By adding PVA glue, gesso or found textures such as leaves, and cutting away areas and lines, the artist makes a plate which will print in both intaglio (incised areas) and relief (raised areas) at the same time. Inking-up the plate with sensitivity and (Hali's word) seduction is the secret of the wide variety of tones and colours that can be achieved with a single pull. But it can be a long process. In Hali's own work a single large collograph can take up to four hours to ink. Printmaking demands the sort of care and cleanliness that one would normally associate with an operating theatre so it was no surprise that scalpels, masks, a blanket and a ‘bed’ were part of the order of the day. But here the analogy stops. The scalpels cut into the plate, the masks protected from fumes, the blanket and the bed belonged to what must be the biggest printing press in the area - 1 metre by 1.6 metres with a bed weighing 300 kilograms, custom-made by pressmaker Graeme Verkerk. Hali is extremely well-organised, a talented, practised teacher as well as an experienced printmaker, very generous with her hard-learnt secrets – the tricks that make it possible for absolute novices to achieve an excellent result. She creates an atmosphere so warm and supportive that a total novice can achieve more success than seems possible in a first-time experience. (And the home-baked scones don’t hurt either!) Hali conducted a beginners’ workshop, on the weekend 27/28 November. From the beginning of 2000, weekly classes will begin. Contact 4464 1500 or machteld@shoal.net.au |
© 1999
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