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The Experimental Printmaking Institute’s year-long 10th anniversary celebration features special events and exhibits showcasing a decade of remarkable work and reflecting EPI’s stature in the forefront of African American art and culture nationally and internationally.
Since its founding in 1996 by Curlee Raven Holton, professor and head of art, EPI has provided an open and creative environment for professional artists and students to create new bodies of work while investigating and experimenting with a wide variety of approaches to the print medium.
“EPI is the only workshop of its kind in a four-year liberal arts institution in the United States that brings renowned artists and students together to experiment with the printmaking medium in a research and educational laboratory setting,” Holton says. “We want to make printmaking a prominent visual arts language and give it value as a creative means of expression. This fits with Lafayette’s mission of excellence, creativity, and achievement.”
An internationally known printmaker and artist, Holton has mounted more than 30 one-person shows and participated in more than 75 group exhibitions, including shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Seventh International Biennale in Cairo, Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm Gallery in Mexico City, and Osaka and Tokyo, Japan. His works are in the collection of the Library of Congress and those of many museums, universities, foundations, and corporations, including Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, West Virginia Governor’s Mansion, Morehouse College, and Fundación Cultural Rodolfo Morales in Oaxaca, Mexico.
EPI’s exhibitions and international exchanges have introduced a broad range of artists and contemporary printmaking trends to members of the Lafayette community and beyond. Its artist-in-residence and visiting artist programs have brought more than 70 professional artists from diverse cultural and social backgrounds to campus, many with international reputations, introducing Lafayette students to talented, well-educated, and ambitious role models.
“The printmaking studio has provided many students with the chance to excel in art, to work side by side with significant artists, and to exhibit their work locally and nationally,” Holton says. “This unique experience cannot be matched elsewhere, even at specialized art schools, because of the combination of Lafayette’s resources and the creative vision of EPI.”
Many of the world-renowned artists who have worked with students, faculty, and local artists at EPI have been brought to the institute through the Temple Performing and Visual Arts Residency. These include David C. Driskell, Sam Gilliam, Emma Amos, Barbara Bullock, Roy Crosse, Melvin Edwards, Robin Holder, Maritza Mosquera, Lou Stovall, Gregory Warmack (“Mr. Imagination”), and William T. Williams.
Among the many other visiting artists and printmakers are Benny Andrews, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Stephen Antonakos, Katie Amelia Baldwin, Robert Beckman, Berrisford Boothe ’83, Duncan Bullen, Elizabeth Catlett, Gregory Coates, Alfonso Corpus, Allan Rohan Crite, Wayne Crothers, Dexter Davis, John E. Dowell Jr., Allan Edmunds, Wanda Ewing, Livma Zarcarias Farah, Grace Hartigan, Joseph Holston, Shellie Jacobson, Lois Mailou Jones, Kofi Kayiga, Paul Keene, Bodo Korsig, Hughie Lee-Smith, Lynn Linnemeier, Al Loving, Ulysses Marshall, Craig Mattis, Juan Alcázar Mendez, Mary Ann Miller, Liz Mitchell, Quentin Mosely, Karima Muyaes, Carlton Parker, Emilio Payan, John Phillips, Maryann Riker, Rolando Rojas, James Rose Jr., Faith Ringgold, Jean Paul Russell, Charles Sallee, Ian Short, Kay WalkingStick, and Joyce Wellman.
EPI’s distinguished board of advisers, which includes Gilliam, Ringgold, Edwards, Anuszkiewicz, and Antonakos, reflects its stature in African American arts. Also on the board are William Busta, curator of collections and exhibitions at Cleveland Artists Foundation; Robert S. Mattison, Lafayette’s Metzgar Professor of Art; Lewis Tanner Moore, African art enthusiast and collector; and Robert E. Steele, executive director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland.
Its central role in the annual National Black Arts Festival also reflects EPI’s prominence. In addition to mounting exhibits at Atlanta’s High Museum during the festival, EPI produced the Collectors’ Guild print in each of the last three years, including Ringgold’s “Wynton’s Tune” in 2004, Gilliam’s “Wind” in 2005, and Holder’s “They Damaged Us More Than Katrina” last year.
EPI also produces releases in a series of prints created by prominent African American artists for the Driskell Center, including Ringgold’s “Mama Can Sing” and Holston’s “Man in Boat.”
In all EPI has produced more than 100 limited-edition prints, including 13 for Ringgold, nine for Driskell, and six for Gilliam. Indeed the printer of choice for world-class artists, the institute is now producing a catalogue raisonné that will include all works produced on site.
EPI is also viewed more and more as a provider for major collections, Holton notes. Works produced at EPI have been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, High Museum, Yale University, New York University, and Mount Holyoke College. “Students have been involved in producing all the prints in these prestigious collections,” he adds.
EPI plans a printmaking symposium for March 6-8. The future will also include collaborations with the Venice Printmaking Workshop in Italy and the Traklhaus Workshop in Salzburg.
The institute honored supporters at a special birthday celebration Sept. 8.
Events marking EPI’s anniversary began in April with the creation, on campus, of the world’s longest print. Holton conceived the idea for the mega-print while watching the creation of a nearly 200-foot-long print in Mexico City. Using landscaping rollers, artists and volunteers produced a 2,000-foot-long print, nearly 1,800 feet longer than the previous record of 200 feet set in 2002 near Philadelphia’s Broad Street. Instrumental in the effort were Karima Muyaes, Emilio Payan, and Livma Zarcarias Farah, visiting artists from Mexico.
Exhibits this fall included More Than a Book (at Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City), Master Artist/Master Printmaker Portfolio (at the Williams Center), Books at the EPI-Center, artists’ books produced at the institute (at Skillman Library), Innovation and Creativity in Printmaking (at the Allentown Art Museum), and Two Masters, works by Holton and Costa Rican master printmaker Alberto Murillo-Herrera (at the David A. Portlock Black Cultural Center).
More Than a Book, featuring artists’ books, opened in Mexico City following a showing at the Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center. Building on previous collaborations between EPI and Costa Rican artists, it includes handmade artists’ books and prints by Holton and other artists from Lafayette, Costa Rica, Mexico City, and the University of Manchester in England. Lafayette students were involved in all aspects of the exhibition, which includes works by Carolyn Burns ’09, Caitlin Chandler ’06, Alexis Gale ’05, Ellen Rose ’09, and Melissa Spitz ’06. The student curator is Sara Smith Katz ’07. The exhibit will move to the University of Manchester.
Master Artist/Master Printmaker includes 16 new works created at EPI during an innovative two-year project that paired eight master artists with eight master printmakers. The artists were Amos, Driskell, Gilliam, Anuszkiewicz, Hartigan, Korsig, Ringgold, and WalkingStick. Printmakers—from workshops in Pennsylvania, Maryland, England, and Japan—were Phillips, Beckman and Short, Holton, Crothers, Russell, Mosely, Dowell, and Edmunds. Maya Freelon ’05, Zoe Gavriilidis ’05, Nicole Kozyra ’05, Chris Metzger ’03, Chandler and Spitz were all involved in the project.
Innovation and Creativity showcases works produced at EPI in collaboration with Anuszkiewicz, Driskell, Gilliam, Hartigan, Ringgold, Catlett, Crite, Jones, and others.
Curlee Raven Holton, director of the Experiemental Printmaking Institute, and Christopher Tague ’00.