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NOTE: This class will be held in a live, online format using the Zoom Platform. 
Class meets Sunday Sep 27, 2020, 1-4pm EDT

It doesn’t matter to me where my images originate: film, digital, wetplate, iPhone, that is only the beginning. It’s the print that interests me.

I first learned the polymer photogravure process from Josephine Sacabo at her studio in New Orleans in 2013. From there I continued to learn from Clay Harmon and from Paul Taylor at Renaissance Press. In 2019 I began working with Silvi Glattauer’s direct to plate method, and my own variation of this is what I will be demonstrating for you this afternoon.

I like and want to share with you the visceral quality of this process, the beautiful papers, the varieties of ink, the inherent individual appearance of each print  — even within a uniform edition. I like that I can’t just press a button and make another one. I like that at the end of the day I am dirty and tired both physically and mentally, not jittery and confused and wondering where the time went while I was starting at a computer screen. I like that there’s a 2,000 lb. press in the middle of my studio, and it’s the love of my life.

I hope that you’ll join me for an afternoon of inspiration and demonstration. We’ll make and expose a polymer plate using the direct to plate method. Then we will explore different ways to ink plates and pull prints, and I’ll let you in on my thinking process as we work. There will also be time for questions and answers, and for looking at examples from my own archives.

All Images  © Jeanne Wells

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Instructor: Jeanne Wells

Jeanne Wells is familiar with and uses many alternative photographic processes, but for the past 12 years has worked mainly with an intaglio press. She first learned the polymer photogravure process from artist Josephine Sacabo and her assistant, Meg Turner at Josephine's studio in New Orleans. She has also studied with Clay Harmon at North Light Photographic Workshops, master printer Paul Taylor at Renaissance Press, and direct-to-plate pioneer Silvi Glattauer of Baldessin Press in Melbourne, Australia.

Through daily practice and combining the best of her mentors’ methods, Jeanne has found a unique way of working and teaching which relies upon the craftsman’s way of working with the hands and the artist’s way of seeing and thinking, and less upon the technological exactitude of digital workflow. The result is a way of working that is intuitive, tactile, and nuanced in a way that is nearly impossible to accomplish unless working by hand. 

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