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Lafayette’s Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI) is no stranger to international cooperation.
Since its founding in 1996 by Curlee Raven Holton, professor of art, EPI has hosted many international artists’ exhibitions and workshops, and has sponsored Lafayette student artwork and projects in other countries.
Just this past May, art major Sara Smith-Katz ’07(Stroudsburg, Pa.) traveled to San Pedro, Costa Rica to act as student curator for EPI’s More Than a Book exhibit at the Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano (Costa Rican-American Cultural Center). During the upcoming school year, the same exhibit and other students will travel to the University of Manchester in England.
In April, EPI hosted a major international event, as three artists from Mexico City came to campus to help students, faculty, and community volunteers produce the longest print in history.
This summer, EPI has gone a step further and is hosting its first international student internship. What is even more impressive is the student found EPI from halfway around the world.
“It just demonstrates a growing interest in EPI and the Lafayette art program,” says Holton.
Janna van Hasselt, of Christchurch, New Zealand, recently received her B.F.A. from Canterbury University in Christchurch. Due to a lack of print shops in New Zealand, she took her search for an internship abroad.
“I went online and searched for an internship and came across EPI,” says van Hasselt. “Curlee’s name popped up and I sent him an email. He said, ‘Of course, we’d be glad to have you.’ However I wasn’t so sure because it seemed just too easy.”
It was that easy, though, and she has spent her summer working with Holton and other artists at EPI. She is currently assisting in the printing of work from artists William T. Williams, Maureen Cummings, and Jay Milder, as well as producing her own work.
“EPI has opened my eyes to new ways of working and new techniques,” says van Hasselt. “It’s made my techniques tighter within my work.”
The internship has also provided professional opportunities for her as her work was included in a recent exhibit at the Allentown Art Museum. She will continue her work at EPI until Aug. 19.
“I hope to start my own print shop or at least something similar when I go back to New Zealand; a place with similar attributes and qualities to EPI,” she says. “I want to give and have a connection with who I’m working with, which is a feeling close to what EPI has so openly given to me.”
Holton hopes this is the first of many international internships. He says a main goal of EPI is to provide opportunities for students and professional artists from around the world to interact.
“We try to open up boundaries,” he says.
Holton has mentored many Lafayette students in printmaking, bookmaking, drawing, and painting. Since he founded EPI, it 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. As part of the Community of Scholars program, he oversaw the completion of a mural three students created for installation in Farinon College Center. He has participated in several residencies and special projects and has served as curator for a dozen exhibitions. He is the author of Faith Ringgold: A View from the Studio, a book published in conjunction with an exhibition of Ringgold’s art at Allentown Art Museum. He had etchings selected for inclusion in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.