Bonjour Printmakers!
I just returned from Paris where my research residency at L’AIR Arts in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris was highly productive, fun, inspiring and exhausting. There were 14 artists involved, from the US, England, France, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, China, South Africa, Brazil, Ecuador and Chile. Everyone spoke English, that was a pre-requisite of the program, and so the variety of accents sounded like a lilting, complex song. I was the only printmaker in the beginning of the residency, but that was not the case by the end! I had a wonderful experience teaching ceramic artist Etta MacPhee from London how to make clay prints, and Paris based sculptor Luis Chenche how to make Solarplate relief prints.
L’AIR Arts gathered some of the most interesting and influential arts professionals in Paris, and selected a fine group of resident artists for the adventure.
The research residency was a fast moving, richly layered, super charged opportunity to be completely immersed in the Paris art scene, both historical and contemporary. There was some opportunity for studio time, and I began a sweet little series of postcard sized Solarplate prints of equine imagery that was all over Paris. Les Chevaux de Paris involves equestrian statuary, horses represented in Toulouse Lautrec prints, the view from between the ears of the horse I rode in the Bois de Boulogne, and thoroughbreds running the Qatar Arc de Triomphe at the famous Hippodrome at Longchamp. I burned about half of the plates in the series. More to come.
Exposing Solarplates in the rain!
Although there was studio time, the emphasis of the residency was meeting and presenting work to curators, gallerists and other arts professionals, while visiting sites of selected time periods in the art history of the area. Art historians gave tours and there were round table discussions and visits to about a billion exhibition venues. As always, Paris was full of great historical shows as well as very interesting contemporary exhibitions.
On top of all of that, I was committed to visiting print shops, researching the role of safer, greener printmaking in Paris today and promoting Print Day in May. Needless to say, sleep was not among my activities on the trip.
It was wonderful to connect with so many people about Print Day In May! Please join me in the effort to spread the word.
Print Day in May
May 2, 2020
Join Us
Robynn