Sometimes a couple of us would be hanging out with someone who was working, or we might be on the roof outside the painting studio, gathered next to the kilns in the sculpture yard, or in someone’s living room. Occasionally somebody would blurt out, “alright… I need to take off and go grind my stone.” We’d usually chuckle. We’d heard it before, or had said it ourselves. “Poor bastard. Have fun with that. We told you the lithography class was going to be a pain in the ass.” We’d resume our conversation knowing that we’d see them the next day and they would be just fine. But whenever I walked through the lithography lab and past one of the printmaking professors office, I’d look over at the presses and work tables, and usually see someone scowling while they slowly ground their stone. You don’t usually see someone smiling while they’re doing that and there’s no shortcut. Eventually though, I’d see a print someone completed a month into the quarter and it would take your breath away, and if I was lucky, I’d see them peel the paper from their stone. To top it off, they’d get to reprint it and reprint it again, and repeat that same feeling over and over until they were satisfied.
My friend E. made lithographic prints. He was a print maker and a ceramicist. Sometimes his prints seemed to defy the hard stone he was working on because his images were soft and intimate. I never learned lithography. I learned a little screen printing, a little woodcut, a little intaglio, some mono-printing, and photography. Each medium has its own thankless tasks of drudgery, but all of the drudgery is the price we pay to break through. There’s always the ‘possibility’ and I know that’s why E. kept grinding. Fortunately for the rest of us, he was always hopeful.
My friend D. was mostly an intaglio print maker. He used found photographic material and created black and white photo-montages which he then exposed to light sensitive film, and then everything was exposed onto photo-sensitive aluminum plate and etched in an acid bath. He also drew directly onto his metal plate to scratch-out, or add details as needed. Eventually, he used the plate to make prints onto thick luscious paper. He had a background in painting and his prints reflected that. They were beautiful and dense. Sometimes they hinted at politics, other times they were bleak domestic images filled with melancholy. You’d often find him sitting on a stool at one of the long tables in the central print lab workspace. He was usually humped over his plate, preparing it, or manipulating the kodalith films he used to expose his plates in the darkroom. His ear buds were usually in and likely listening to Lou Reed, Roxy Music or Bowie. He’d look up and give me a friendly nod if I was just passing through, or if he sensed I wanted to talk, he’d remove his buds and encourage me to sit.
One particular evening I was up in the painting studio on the second floor and had it to myself. During the weeknights you’d often share the space with a couple of other folks, but after midnight, or on a Friday and Saturday night, you could count on being alone. Sometimes I’d be in the painting studio, or the photo lab, a friend would be in the printmaking studio, another might be in the sculpture studio and if it was really hopping, there might be a few folks in the ceramics studio. It felt like we owned the art building. The way art students should feel.
I was sitting alone staring at a big, white canvas. I had just finished applying the last coat of gesso an hour earlier, and was waiting for it to dry. D. walked in and greeted me. He went out of his way, up to the second floor, to check-in with me for the night. It was a little unusual for him to stop up. The printmaking studio and small photo lab where he spent most of his time were on the first floor, which is where he was headed. After smoking on the roof outside the studio windows, we came back in and sat and talked for awhile. While we sat there, he scanned a few of my paintings that were around and then settled on the large blank canvas I was about to work on. “I don’t know how you do it.” “Do what?” I said. “How you’re able to stare at that white surface and just start painting without a specific plan”. I asked him why. “Because I’m uncomfortable with the whole immediacy of it, that’s why I make prints. I have a plan and the process takes quite awhile before the image is printable so I can just ease into it.” I understood what he was saying and told him that I’m way too impatient. I’m most comfortable with something I can immediately respond to. That’s why I use house paint along with traditional oil paints. House paint allowed me to obliterate areas of paintings I didn’t like on the cheap. His way of working was far more methodical. That conversation was huge for me. I’d never heard anyone else reveal themselves about making art in that way, about our common fear and about how for both of us, the emotional part of the process had the biggest impact on what we made and how we made it.
Dedicated to E. S. and D. J.
Songs :: Bottoming Out by Lou Reed, Without You by David Bowie, and the entire Comes a Time and Rust Never Sleeps albums
© C. Davidson