Edith May studied architecture and Australian art in the ’80s and is today the manager of the Fire Station Print Studio in Melbourne, Australia. She applied for a job there in 2010 and soon found herself facing the task of putting some order into an artist-run operation that was on the verge of being closed.
Since then Edith, the municipal authority, and the team she recruited have achieved financial stability; built up the membership to 100 artists; instituted a year-round gallery program with a professional curator; initiated community art programs for the intellectually disabled, migrant women and people with addiction problems; and achieved recognition both in the Australian printmaking community and on the social networks. The Fire Station also encourages young graduate printmakers with opportunities and prizes.
“I love my job, ” says Edith, “because I see it as something I’ve nurtured.”
Edith had always loved art and thought that when she got the time she might turn her hand to painting. She never considered making fine-art prints. But after a couple of years at the Fire Station the ink began to infiltrate her blood. Then it occurred to her that she could combine her love for travel with training in printmaking.
She’s just finished a two-week workshop with Maureen in Granada and will be catching the plane tomorrow with her luggage full of prints created in Maureen’s studio in new styles and with new techniques. In this post we’re going to concentrate on the work that Edith did while she was here. The album that follows includes a representative selection, of some of the work, but not all of it, as the later stuff did not make the deadline. See what you think:
We’ve saved the best for last. These five prints were all pulled from the same liquid-metal-technique plate, the first one a straight print, the rest ghost prints. All of these images were done with a single pass through the press.
“What I liked about working with Maureen was how easy she made it,” says Edith. “Printmaking can be confusing, but Maureen does everything in a logical order and that makes the processes easy to follow. And, of course, working one-on-one is a great luxury. I was amazed at the amount of ground we covered and all the prints we created.”
Printmaking Courses in Spain 
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