Platemark episodes on YouTube

In s3e33, Platemark podcast host Ann Shafer talks with Ruth Lingen, printer and owner of Line Press Limited, located in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. Line Press Limited does just about everything except screenprinting. Ruth is a jack-of-all-trades, and loves book arts the most, from papermaking to typesetting to printing…

In s3e32 of Platemark, a podcast about prints and the printmaking ecosystem, host Ann Shafer speaks with Ad Stijnman, an independent scholar of historical printmaking processes, specializing in manual intaglio printmaking techniques. He is also a professional printmaker. Ad is the go-to guy on all sorts of things. When he…

In s2e29, Platemark hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig talk about Claude Lorrain, the arbiter of landscape painting in the 17th century. He worked most of his life in Rome and elevated landscape as a subject up the hierarchy by including small figural groups and naming the compositions with mythological…

In s3e31 of Platemark, host Ann Shafer speaks with Lothar Osterburg, artist, professor and leading expert on the fine art of photogravure. These are basically photographs transferred to copper plates and printed as etchings. (It's of course more complicated than that.) In this way, it is possible to get images…

In Platemark s3e30, host Ann Shafer speaks with Ruth Fine, retired curator from the National Gallery of Art. Ruth was curator of modern prints and drawings there from 1980–2002, followed by an additional period working on special projects in modern art. Since her retirement in 2010, Ruth has been working…

In Platemark s3e29, host Ann Shafer speaks with April Vollmer, an artist working in mokuhanga (Japanese color woodblock printing) who also wrote the indispensable guide to that form: Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop (Berkeley: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2015). What's mokuhanga, you ask? It's a method developed in Japan that was used to…

In s3e28, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Linda Hults, retired professor of art history from the College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio. Linda wrote THE textbook on the history of Western prints, which any student of the topic will undoubtedly still have on their shelves. At nearly 1,000 pages, the…

In Platemark s3e27, host Ann Shafer talks with Emma Nishimura, an artist and professor based in Toronto. Emma works in printmaking, photography, sculpture, and installation. Her work addresses ideas of inherited memory and trauma with a specific focus on the experiences her family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians endured…

Platemark s3e26's guest is Jennifer Mack-Watkins, and artist and children's book illustrator based in Savannah, GA. Her work looks at social conformities that limit us and box us in, whether beauty, relationships, body image, power, or gender roles. Her work often features young Black children playing, celebrating their innocence and…

Platemark s3e25's guest is Michael Barnes, an artist and professor at Northern Illinois University who specializes in lithography. In addition to deep knowledge of how lithography works, Michael is also an historian of the technique and a collector as well. Get ready to geek out about lithographs and lithography.

In s2e28, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig conclude their two-part conversation about Claude Mellan. An encounter with Mellan’s best known work, The Holy Face of Christ on St. Veronica's Sudarium, is to be a witness to greatness. The engraving is an extraordinary feat and is a high-water mark in…

In s3e24, Platemark host Ann Shafer speaks with Steve Goddard, curator emeritus from the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Steve’s specialty is prints of northern Europe (1450–present), although he has been known to stray into the graphic arts of the World War One era,…

In s2e27, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig begin a two-part conversation about Claude Mellan, who engraved the most astonishing portrait of Jesus Christ in the history of art. In fact, if it weren’t for his print of the Holy Face on the Sudarium, Mellan may have dropped out of…

In Platemark s3e23, host Ann Shafer speaks with Kimberly Henrikson, Executive Director, Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT. CCP offers myriad services from contract printing, to artist’s residencies, classes, workshops, and exhibitions. It really does it all. As CCP’s executive director and administrator, Kimberly not only makes sure the…

In s2e26, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig conclude the conversation about Jacques Callot, who is the first printmaker in Western art to record the atrocities of war. He heads up any list of artists in the history of prints using them to spread news far and wide about societal…

In Platemark s3e22, host Ann Shafer talks with Laura Einstein, manager of the Gallery at the Met Store. Tucked away on the mezzanine of the bookstore at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a gallery space where limited edition, fine art prints are available for purchase. The Gallery (formerly known…

In Platemark s3e21, host Ann Shafer talks with Pam Paulson, founder of Paulson Fontaine Press, Berkeley, California. After earning her MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1982 (she was a teaching assistant for Robert Colescott), Pam cut her teeth in printmaking at Crown Point Press in…

In s2e25, hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig take an in-depth look at Jacques Callot, who is the first printmaker in Western art to record the atrocities of war. He heads up any list of artists using prints to spread news far and wide about societal ills through visual means.…

In Platemark s3e20, host Ann Shafer talks with Kimberli Gant, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. While Kimberli’s specialty isn’t in prints per se, she is one of those unusual non-print curators who likes and appreciates prints and incorporates them into her projects. Her work on…

Platemark s2e24 concludes hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig’s conversation on reproductive prints. Once again, for clarity, a reproductive print is one in which an artist creates a design (a drawing, painting, sculpture) and another artist creates a print after that original design. These can be sanctioned by the first…

In s3e19, host Ann Shafer talks with Maryanne Ellison Simmons, collector, printer, and owner of Wildwood Press in St. Louis, MO. Along with her husband, baseball hall-of-famer Ted Simmons, Maryanne collects contemporary prints. A large portion of the collection is now at the Saint Louis Art Museum where it was…

In s3e18, host Ann Shafer talks with dealer Susan Teller, whose eponymous gallery operates out of the Mana Fine Arts facility in Jersey City, NJ. Susan specializes in American paintings and works on paper of the mid-twentieth century. She also works with multiple artists’ estates including Peggy Bacon, William Baziotes,…

Platemark s2e23 continues hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig’s conversation on reproductive prints. For clarity, a reproductive print is one in which an artist creates a design (a drawing, painting, sculpture) and another artist creates a print after that original design. These can be sanctioned by the first artist or…

In s3e17, Platemark host Ann Shafer talks with print dealer Jeannot Barr, who organized the first (and many subsequent) New York Print Fair in 1984. They also touch on pricing, buying at auction, fair organization, and a host of other business-of-art topics. They delve into the Ferdinand Roten Gallery and…