Printmaking Courses in Spain

Here’s What We’ve Been Up To for the Past 15 Years or So

Mike and I were reminiscing the other evening about all of the wonderful people who have come to Granada to work with me in my studio over the years when he said, “Why don’t we do a multí-chapter post that is a tribute to all of them? Do you have samples of their work?” That’s how this project was born, and it’s turning out to be a fascinating stroll for me through years of printmaking, teaching, and collaborative work with other artists. I hope it will be that for some of you, too.

What follows is the first chapter in a retrospective virtual exhibit of work done by the artists who have worked with me in my studio over many years. They have come from all over the world, from Canada and the U.S.A to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Australia, and many places in between. They appear here in roughly chronological order. Their work includes a wide variety of techniques: traditional acid etching, collage, variations on solar-plate printmaking, liquid metal, photogravure, linocuts, etc. The photographs used here of the artists and their work were mainly done by Mike while they were here. Where available we have included excerpts from the messages they left in my visitors’ book as they were leaving. Let’s start at the beginning.

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Enrico Michieletto, Northern Italy

Michieletto, a talented young Italian sculptor, had moved recently from Berlin to Granada when he showed up at my studio one morning (all in black leather and great clumpish black boots, which was the Berlin fashion trend of the day) wanting to do some traditional acid-etched prints. So we spent the next couple of weeks rendering his sketches onto zinc plates.  These aquatints are some of the results. He didn’t stay long in Granada and we never saw him again. Best of luck to you, Michieletto!

Esperanza Romero, Granada, Spain

Esperanza Romero, whose speciality for years has been ceramic sculpture, was one of the first people to work in my studio with me, along with two other Granada artists, Carmen Almécija and Barbara Pflanz Nagasawa, my old friend from Bavaria, now living in Granada. They were all anxious to get into printmaking and I devoted about three months to getting them started. All of them have gone on to do wonderful work and set up their own printmaking studios. It was the success and satisfaction–pure joy, actually–that I got from working with these three friends that led me into doing printmaking workshops. Let’s start with Esperanza and some of her prints.

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Carmen Almécija, Granada, Spain

I first met Carmen, a fine-arts graduate from the University of Granada, in this first workshop with Esperanza and Barbara. Carmen is the quintessential working artist, a dedicated, seriously creative person with a lot of personal charm. In subsequent years we have collaborated several times. She has recently begun working with textiles with notable success. She’s one of my best girls.

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Barbara Pflanz Nagasawa, Bavaria/Granada

Barbara was one of my first artist friends in Granada, from the early 70’s when she and her compañero, Toru Nagasawa, ran Mario Maya’s bar in Granada’s Sacromonte cave quarter. Flamenco dancer Mario, who died recently, was discovered by an English patron dancing in a Gypsy cave spectacle when he was a boy  and trained as a dancer in New York. But that’s another story. Barbara’s paintings were bold and graphic from the beginning so it was a natural transition for her to move on to printmaking. Here are a couple of her prints. (I’ll try to get some more and enlarge this post later.)

Berto Concepción, Tenerife, Spain

Berto was my agent in the Canary Islands for many years. Before the Spanish economy broke he sold a lot of commemorative editions to town halls and provincial governments. I did the original work for some of them. For others I edited other people’s work. It was a cordial and fruitful relationship which sadly came to an end in 2009 when the Spanish real-estate bubble–and with it everything else–burst. Here’s to better times, Berto. Note: the prints at the bottom were made from plates that had been created by an exceptional artist from the Canary Islands and buried for 50 years.

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