Hub Staff

People came together at the Southampton Arts Centre, Art School & Gallery on October 16 as they hosted an opening reception for the launch of Printmakers 2015, an exhibition running at the Gallery from October 16 to November 15.

The exhibition features a collection of original hand pulled prints from six local and professional printmakers, Peri Jolley, Pat Keeling, Sharon Barfoot, Eileen Simpson, Barbara Sprague and Donna Welton.

“I'm really glad to have the printmakers here and to be featuring their work for a month,” said Gallery Director, April Patry. “I think it's a real feather in our cap, the school and the gallery to be connected to the printmakers.”

Barbara Sprague said that printmaking is a fun process as the results can be unexpected. “You can plan it to a certain point and then it kind of takes off,” she said, adding, “we paint ink directly onto the plate and then put it through the press and then you never really know what's going to happen.” Sprague explained that the paper is soaked and laid on top of the plate with the ink up and then run through the press. “Because the paper is wet it picks up the paint,” she explained.

Pat Keeling said that printmaking is a rather unusual form of art and because the process is “backwards” the end result rarely happens the way they thought it would. “When you take the plate and start building the print you have to get the last thing on the plate first so it doesn't come out on top,” she explained, adding that the image is also backwards because it's a mirror image.

The group started five or six years ago, renting space from the Gallery from January to April, and Keeling said that they all help each other. “We've all monitored and mentored and pushed each other ... we've all learned from each other.” She called the art form original. “We hand pull all these prints. Some of them might have been done with a roller without the press but most of them went through the press and the images that we like out of all the hundreds are on the wall,” she said.