Love of print a powerful drawcard

Carole Shepherd says printmaking is a continual investigation into risk and experimentation. Photo/Stuart Munro

The Whanganui UCOL summer print school was so popular Carole Shepherd could not get a look in to attend.

But it was not a hard ask to invite the long-time Kawhia printmaker, who works in isolation, to join the printmaking community for the week.

"I walk into a print studio and I just inhale."

The printmaking community is close-knit and the students-turned-tutors have all worked with each other over the years.

She loves the space where the summer school is being held on the former UCOL campus between Wicksteed and Campbell St and to where the print faculty returned from the Taupo Quay campus.

"This is an amazing faculty, the equipment, the space."

But the sadness, she says, is that print is being marginalised at tertiary level.

Ms Shepherd disputes that it is an expensive art form.

"Print is in everything and students just love it."

She says the three key exponents keeping print alive are Wanganui's Marty Vreede, senior lecturer at the UCOL Quay School of the Arts Print School; Neil Emmerson at Otago Polytech, and Steve Lovett at the Manukau Institute of Technology Diploma of Visual Arts programme.

Ms Shepherd previously taught printmaking in Auckland with Vreede and Rodney Frumpston, and taught for many years at the Elam School of Fine Arts.

A few months ago, Ms Shepherd judged a print exhibition at Mairangi Bay in which print-etcher Struan Hamilton was placed first, Julia Ellery second, and Vreede third.

The art of printmaking started for Ms Shepherd in 1975.

"I had two kids and I felt like I needed to get back to work."

She thought she was going to get into painting when she attended a summer school, but was offered printmaking instead.

Printmaking is a continual investigation into risk and experimentation. "You can't control it, you let it happen. If you are an artist who wants perfect results, you can do it in print."