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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

Photographer Jeanne Wells was born and raised on the Maine coast, where she has lived most of her life. She studied literature and writing at Lesley College in Cambridge, MA. Wells uses all forms and formats of cameras. She is self-taught in film and darkroom work, and has also studied wet collodion with Mark Osterman and Keliy Anderson-Staley. Well’s work is collected and exhibited internationally.  Over the years she has been published in many contemporary photo magazines, has been awarded a merit prize from Black and White magazine, and has been a top 200 Critical Mass finalist.  In 2018 her work was features in Polymer Photogravure, by Clay Harmon. Jeanne teaches and works at her studio, Things of This World Press, in Aroostook County, Maine. Her early life in both music and poetry continue to influence and inspire her visual work.

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