The short answer lies here.
Otherwise:
The ANU School of Art has a special place in my heart. It, along with the Australian National University in general, is one of my life’s sacred sites. Way before I ever thought of going there (when I was doing an Arts degree in very non-art subjects), I lived in group houses with art students and earned money there by life modelling. When I discovered that they had a great letterpress set-up, and that letterpress was my destiny (it was really like that: a major epiphany weekend), I went to night classes at the school to build up a portfolio, and then I went to the school itself as a student. Straight after graduating, I was hired by the bit of the school that has a letterpress studio and I’ve been there ever since, teaching and helping. I even design their promotional flyers, some years.
Every year I see students that I think would be fun to work with. Sometimes they’ve been in one of my classes, sometimes I’ve just seen their work around the school and thought that it would translate well to print. That’s why I decided to join the Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS) which the school has in place to help students transition to a world without art school.
EASS is a bundle of fun, ranging from international scholarships to cash prizes to residencies. There are also collectors who happily use the scheme to get first pick of the work in the graduating exhibition, and they pay a premium on the prices to help with the cash prizes.
My contribution is a residency in my studio to make a letterpress broadside. Originally I thought that these would be very traditional in format: a piece of text either rendered completely typographically on the page or accompanied with imagery. The more it progresses, the less I care about the traditional idea. What I seem to be doing is giving these people access to my equipment with a ration of paper and seeing what happens — the only mandantory aspect is that they have to finish with an edition that can be sold (with the proceeds split between us). So it’s become more of a letterpress print residency, really.
So far I’ve had 4 ex-students, with two of those working with me as I write this, so I’m not totally sure what they are producing, but the experiments so far have been wonderful. I also keep aside ten copies of the edition for a future folio / exhibition pack. Each person also gets a letter outlining what they’ve achieved and the skills they’ve acquired, so that they can apply to use letterpress equipment elsewhere. I think it’s a pretty good deal.
If you’re interested in what we’re doing, buy a print, they’re all available at the Duckshop (to get there, hover your mouse up there on the web header, you’ll find a drop-down box that will take you to it) and very reasonably priced. Each print sale lifts the confidence of the resident who made it, and encourages me to keep doing this. Or if you’d like to be an EASS patron yourself, click that link at the top of this page and get involved. It’s a lot of fun and satisfaction.
List of recipients to date:
2010
Natalie Azzopardi
Peter McLean
2011
Helani Laisk
Jonathan Webster