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The advisory board for Lafayette’s Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI) held its annual meeting this month and discussed celebration activities for its 10th anniversary during the 2006-07 academic year.
Plans include a symposium bringing printmakers from other institutions to campus, a traveling exhibition of the EPI archives, and the publication of a catalogue raisonné, a collection of all works produced on site.
The catalogue will feature an essay, images of prints, and photographs of students and artists working in the print studio. Artists represented in the collection include Faith Ringgold, Melvin Edwards, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Grace Hartigan, Emma Amos, Sam Gilliam, and many other master artists. This publication will serve as a historical document of the important contributions EPI has made to the printmaking cannon. The publication will be distributed to historians, collectors, printmaking
studios, and artists.
Master artists who served residencies will be asked to return to the studio and create new work to be included in a portfolio that will be available to collectors, museums, and other institutions. Alumni who worked at EPI during their college career will also be invited to serve as artists-in-residence.
In addition, the Friends of EPI program will have exclusive access to purchase prints created at EPI.
The nine-person board is comprised of renowned artists Ringgold; Anuszkiewicz; Edwards; Gilliam; Stephen Antonakos; Robert E. Steele; executive director for the David C. Driskell Center at University of Maryland; William Busta, curator of collections and exhibitions at Cleveland Artists Foundation; Lewis Tanner Moore, African art enthusiast and collector; and Robert S. Mattison, Marshall R. Metzgar Professor of Art. The meeting was led by EPI founder and director Curlee Holton, professor and head of art.
Also in attendance were art majors Sarah Smith-Katz ’07 (Gap, Pa.) and Elizabeth Taylor ’06 (Orinda, Calif.), who are EXCEL Scholars working at EPI.
“It was impressive to have a renowned group of artists come together to give their perspective and input on how EPI can continue to grow,” says Smith-Katz. “It speaks well of EPI that this group was willing to give their time (a full day) to focus on the program.”
“I feel privileged to be a part of EPI and I hope that in the coming years, as it continues to develop, even more students utilize it as an important cultural resource,” says Taylor.
EPI, established in 1996, promotes research and experimentation within the printmaking medium. The studio is equipped with etching presses, a lithography press, an automatic, vacuum-operated serigraph press, and a letterpress. The mission of EPI is to provide a creative environment in which professional artists and students can create work and investigate new and experimental approaches to the print medium. EPI offers a student-centered program where students have direct encounters with established artists from diverse backgrounds.