Thank you Sam Cowan!

Intern Sam Cowan works with Jeff Dell at P.R.I.N.T

Thank you to Sam Cowan for serving as an Intern at the press! A BFA candidate in Printmaking, Sam worked as the fall 2016 Intern at P.R.I.N.T and will present at Scholars Day in April 2017 for an Honor's College Undergraduate Research Fellowship. In this essay Sam Cowan shares his thoughts about working at the press: 

I have been very fortunate with my time at P.R.I.N.T Press. It has afforded me a valuable window into the day to day operations of a professional press, as well as the opportunity to learn some standard practices behind working collaboratively, particularly in an academic setting. The skills learned and experience gained will help me shape a more sustainable, enjoyable studio practice on my own outside of school.

A large part of printmaking is curbing expectation and overcoming unforeseen limitations to create the work you had envisioned. – Sam Cowan

I started the internship with an introduction to the press. I was shown around the studio and told that my next few weeks would be dedicated to cleaning the workspace and curating the previous artist's project, a collaboration between Linda Ridgway and Katherine Brimberry of Flatbed Press in Austin. I was shown how to create drafts for the certificates of authentication that would later be used to identify the prints. When I was not cleaning I was double-checking the dimensions and condition of the prints, verifying that the medium and technique listed were correct for the corresponding prints and that the production notes for re-creating a work (if necessary) were accurate. I was also shown how to package prints for temporary storage so that they could properly be moved from one studio to another.

By the time I had finished cleaning the studio and curating the previous project's prints the next visiting artist, Jeffery Dell of Texas State in San Marcos, was in town. Working under Jeffery Dell and Lari Gibbons, and observing their working relationship with the graduate assistants was a very beneficial experience. I was shown for the first time what a healthy collaborative work environment is like, where every team-member brings a valuable skill-set or viewpoint to the arena.

Since it can be expensive to house a visiting artist, and in this situation particularly time-sensitive since we had a visiting professor who has obligations outside of his professional practice, most of the decisions regarding an edition must be made in one week. This includes the creation of a bon à tirer or a right to proof; these are essentially two different versions of a print that is licensed to P.R.I.N.T Press for additional printing. Finding a work that an artist is comfortable with in one week can be a difficult process, and Jeffery Dell was kind enough to hold an open portfolio and artist talk while visiting so everyone had their work cut out for them. However, Jeffery Dell was working very quickly and loosely in his time at P.R.I.N.T Press to create a number of monoprints and trial proofs which allowed for a greater variety of options when it came to narrowing down his work for an edition. After a week of heavy experimentation, he identified a successful piece from which we could print an edition. Watching the ease with which he and all the assistants were problem solving was encouraging for my own practice.

Jeffery Dell's project was ambitious and experimental, and with that came problems, and with those problems came interesting and unusual solutions that I had not yet been exposed to in my own student work. – Sam Cowan

The remainder of my time at P.R.I.N.T was spent working with David Villegas and Thomas Menikos to collate the notes that had been taken during Jeffery Dell's studio week, and create an edition of work based around the right-to-print that had been left for reference. This consisted of a full month of mixing inks and running trial proofs to find ideal color matches and transparencies for the layers we would be printing, which was followed by another month of intensive printing and problem solving to complete the edition.

Although it was a fairly difficult, time consuming process the extensive notes taken and reorganized were well worth the effort. Our notes will assist any future printers should the need to pull another edition ever arise. Those same notes will also be of great use to me, as I was fortunate enough to be granted a research fellowship for the P.R.I.N.T Press internship, and will be presenting the techniques used to create the print at University Scholars Day in April. That being said, if you're reading this within the correct time frame, come on by for an unabridged version of How to Print Jeff's Stuff presented by yours truly.

One of my most valuable experiences from working at the press is the knowledge that things do, and often will go wrong. A large part of printmaking is curbing expectation and overcoming unforeseen limitations to create the work you had envisioned. Jeffery Dell's project was ambitious and experimental, and with that came problems, and with those problems came interesting and unusual solutions that I had not yet been exposed to in my own student work.

I am very grateful to Lari Gibbons and the University of North Texas for the unique opportunity to work in a professional environment as an undergrad. It provided much needed insight on the professional working relationship of print-makers, as well as a successful studio practice as a whole. It also allowed me a freedom from expectation in my own work since there will always be problems in need of solving to create great prints, and the work needed to create them is hardly ever easy.

Thank you to the Offices of the President, Provost, Vice President for Finance and Administration, Vice President for Research and Economic Development, and the Dean of TAMS and the Honors College for your support of Honors Day.