Master Session

Solar Plate for Photographers /Photogravure Workshop

Paul Romaniuk, Photopolymer gravure print

Workshop Details | Solar Plate/ Photogravure Printing with Don MESSEC

Photogravure printing has a long history in photographic printmaking, including the production of fine prints and books by Edward Curtis, Alfred Stieglitz, and Walker Evans.  The technique is still used today by a number of renowned contemporary fine art photographers.

We have recently acquired - through the very generous donation of one of our supporters - a beautiful Praga etching press with 18"x24" plate capability and we have invited Don Messec up from Santa Fe, New Mexico to teach a photo-polymergravure workshop. Don is the founder of Making Art Safely and his courses teach completely non-toxic methods and materials for print making.

Achieve beautiful intaglio and relief images without acids, solvents or highly toxic and combustible materials.  New materials in printmaking are changing everything about how we can achieve our vision.  The same plate materials that make beautifully embossed text and graphic relief work can also produce subtle intaglio washes, photographic tones and detail, or simple line drawings.  Solarplate will let you dream beyond the limitations of what printmaking and photography meant only a decade ago.

Participants may use digital photographs, draw and/or paint, photocopy or use computer-created images to generate a positive transparency. The transparency is then transferred to a light sensitized "Solarplate", developed with water, inked and printed.  We will focus on photographic uses of this process, but also employ grain glass as a sensual drawing surface or drawing acetates.  An introduction to  hand-manipulating digital photocopy transparencies will be offered if desired by workshop participants.

Once you understand it, the entire process is simple and may be completed in a matter of a few hours instead of days.  However, the process will seduce you into experimenting and discovering new ways to create images.  The effects can be equivalent to photogravure, hard-ground, soft-ground, and even some traditional lithography, or book press.

Don Messec has been at the forefront of printmaking’s contemporary revolution in non-toxic research for over 15 years, an effort of that has taken printmaking from one of the most toxic and environmentally harmful of artists’ media to one of art’s cleanest.  Along the way, it has become apparent that new processes and materials have opened whole new aesthetics for work on paper and beyond.  Solarplate is the name given by Dan Welden to his process, developed first in 1971.