Over the last two summers I’ve been refurbishing a building in a small village called Plaisance du Gers in South West France. It’s about two hours from Toulouse in the middle of 15th century forgotten, rural French landscape.
When I first bought this large, rambling building I envisioned a place to live with a printmaking studio to work, somewhere to be my own personal creative space. A lifetime ambition no less. However it has become clear to me that this space has the potential to be transformed into something much bigger and grander in scale. The place is immense!
Recently, with the help of Patrick Roe and Giles Hovendon of AMR Logan Press, I have managed to acquire two new presses. One a Rochat etching press formerly owned by Dorothea Wight of the Print Studio, which produced etchings by renowned 20th century British artists including Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbuch, Paula Rego, Ken Kiff and Julian Trevelyan. The other, a beautifully restored Columbian press from 1839. These two presses combined with the Vandercook SP20 proofing press already in my possession complete what I think could be a dynamic working formula, a word and image studio using the traditional forms of printmaking, etching and woodcut with or without type.
I have always felt printmaking studios are essentially communal, social places and work best when the equipment is in frequent use. That has always been the way I’ve worked, probably due to my experience working in London at the Artichoke Printmaking Studios, other open access studios or college workshop environments.
At present I am happy to be there by myself in splendid isolation, however I do feel that this would be somewhat of a waste considering the effort putting this great facility together. The studio is spacious and well equipped and could be employed for many purposes — creating new prints, editioning or education, for example summer schools, or alternatively for anarchic, subversive personal projects.
I am keen to see this studio being used as a resource for creative work and would like to hear from anyone who may be interested.
Written by Simon Redington, 2020 — if you would like to find out more about this or any other article, please email: info@printmaking.world
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