Printmaking 200-400 Post baccalaureate seminar
Q: Outside of your classes, what do you do academically?
A: All of the faculty are professional artists here. I have a show opening tomorrow night downtown. So you teach, but you also do your art. This is true with not just me but all of the faculty. So the faculty are always going off to do talks and exhibitions and this sort of professional activity. That's what makes it exciting for the students. We are not just professors but professional artists.
Q: What is the method used for printmaking?
A: Well, etching. Rembrandt made etchings.You etch copper plates or zinc plates. It's like 15th century chemistry. This is like a lab. A print shop is a chemistry lab circa the year, 1500. So it's state of the art printing, but the years 1500. Now there's Xerox and Inkjet and all that kind of stuff. Every printing technology started out as a technology. It was the fastest way to make images and multiply them. If you buy a book that was made in the 16th Century, the illustrations of the book are etchings.They are hand-printed pictures. So printmaking always has this conceptual divide. It has a didactic purpose. You can make multiples of the picture. You can reproduce the picture so you can spread the communication. But it also has these inherent visual properties that are beautiful. No one makes etchings today because they are trying to make lots of them. They make them to make art. So it's kind of interesting conceptually because it is rooted in a medieval guild, but we are making art for today. Today's art. Contemporary art. So that's two different things. That's a paradox.
Q: How did you discover this form of art?
A: Etching has a 500-year-old history, so it was a discovery for me. I first started making etchings in high school. I went to a really extraordinary high school growing up in Iowa and it was really like a fine arts high school. I knew when I was a kid that I wanted to be an artist. I made sculptures. I made paintings. I made watercolors. I did everything that kids do, but I had a very early exposure to printmaking, to etching. And I loved it. And I have been making etchings full-time for 35 years, since I was 16.
Q: What is your favorite color?
A: When the students make their etchings, they say, "Can we use colors? Can we use any color ink?" And I tell them they can use any color ink as long as it's black. That's a famous funny line from Ford when they were making their first cars. So I am talking about the graphic power of a black line. My favorite color is a very dull green. No. My favorite color is pink. Like salmon. Say pink. Pink's my favorite color.
Q: What artist do you admire most?
A: Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Well, he died in 1570. He made oil paintings. This is a fairly early Flemish painter. And they are very troubling today. So it's like the origins of landscape painting. Very early in the history of landscape painting. That's historically my favorite. Then contemporary artist, it would be Joseph Beuys. He makes sculpture and installation, prints, drawings.
Q: What is your opinion of U.S. involvement in Iraq?
A: We talk a lot about that over here. We talk about that all the time. Let me talk about it in the following way: There is a very famous printmaker and etcher named Goya. This is 1798. He did a very famous series called "The Disasters of War," and it's about when Napoleon invaded Spain. He talks a lot about the atrocities. French soldiers are raping civilians. Civilian casualties. This is pretty graphic stuff. The thing is, he doesn't choose sides. It's just an expression of the darker side of humanity. He's Spanish but he doesn't say it's all about Spain being good and the French are evil. He's saying that the Spanish, were just as evil as the French. Everybody is bad. He doesn't take sides in this war, despite that you think he would because he's Spanish. And so, today we're still looking at Goya. He's a great artist. His work hasn't passed into mere history. It's something deeper. It's a deeper expression. So, as an artist, there's the politics of today, but then there's art. This is all true. It's all true. Everything is true. Every paradox, every contradiction, everything is true. You listen to the American press and they're saying, "Ra ra, this is all great. We are all heroes. Wave the flags and sing the songs." You listen to the Russian press, the French press, the TV, they are showing exactly the same images we are seeing on CNN, and they are talking about imperialists butchering civilians. It's the same picture, but it's all true. Which perspective is true? It's all true. That's my view on the war. It's the defeat of humanity.
Q: Are there people who think you are a dean since your first name is Dean?
A: Oh yeah. Always. That goes on all the time. It's very funny. It's my name, not my title. I am a first year advisor now and I have been a first year advisor a lot. So sometimes when first and second years get into academic trouble, you get a call from your dean and you got to go have an interview. This is not fun. So one time this young lady comes to my office, one of my advisees, and we are chitchatting. She is totally nervous. She's about to burst into tears. I am like, "Hey." I am laughing and joking. We are just having a normal talk. "What classes are you taking? How is it going?" And finally it comes out that she thinks she's going to be thrown out of school. She thinks that she's come to the office and I am going to tell her this. She thinks she's gone to her dean. The poor girl. So things like this happen a few times. But it's even better than that because my e-mail is "dad." So when these clever U.Va. students come here and set up an alias for their parents, they think they're e-mailing their dad and they're writing to me. It happens every semester. And I have to write back and say, "You have mistakenly reached professor..." I don't know how it happens but it always happens in September when the new kids come in.
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