World Printmakers’ Print Workshop Central

El Gallinero Receives Its First Artists, Makes for a Busy Springtime in 2010

It’s been a busy month and a half in my studio, working with artists from both sides of the Atlantic. All of them stayed in our new Gallinero (“Chicken House”) artists’ residence and have confirmed our highest hopes for that
studio/cabin as a place which genuinely inspires creative work.

Isabel Fallow
The first one to visit was Isabel Fallow, accompanied by her husband, Jack, a professional communicator and mediator (in the peacemaking sense of the word) who dedicated his time to reading and relaxing and sorting out the world with my husband Mike while Isabel and I worked together in the studio.

Isabel, like all the others, found my studio on Internet (I’m not sure where as Mike has put me all over the place…) She’s a painter and printmaker from Buckinghamshire in the U.K. Her work is bold with a distinctive personal touch, and her drawings lent themselves nicely to the creation of solar-plate prints. She was delighted with the results and is already talking about coming back for more, perhaps with a few artist friends.

Beatriz Taillefer & Eduardo
Beatriz and Eduardo are, respectively, an established painter and a professional photographer from Málaga on the southern Mediterranean coast of Spain. Both were fascinated with the solar-plate techniques, and anxious to apply them to their work, each in their own way. Beatriz, who is doing a lot of portrait commissions lately, was anxious to change techniques for a while, so she spent some time working on her favorite subject, flowers, which she does beautifully.

Eduardo’s prints, based on his photographs expertly manipulated in PhotoShop, surprised me with their artful qualities. Who said you can’t make real art with a computer?  Artistic creation aside, Beatriz and Eduardo discovered that the bar next door served free tapas with the drinks and became loyal regulars there evenings.

Janet Stahle-Fraser
Janet arrived in early June, along with her husband, Dave, from their cabin “in the bush” somewhere north of Toronto. In the two weeks she spent in my studio Janet touched some of the most interesting techniques: solar plate, carborundum, liquid metal, chine collé and  experimental printing. She was delighted to go home with a big bundle of plates and prints under her arm, which she will be showing this summer in her Tapawingo Studio in Baysville, Ontario.

Dave, whom Mike refers to as his “Canadian expert,” got stuck into what was supposed to be a minor building project with Mike but wound up as two days of hard-rock mining, as the walls of our house are of stone almost two feet thick!
The final result was the hanging of this antique plant hanger which they found in a second-hand lot for 10 euros, thinking it was “a bargain.”

Note: There are still some available spaces in my calendar of summer workshops, both for the courses and the Gallinero. But you need to write me soon, or phone (+34 658 953399) before they are spoken for.

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Breaking News:

El Gallinero is now finished, furnished and taking reservations. Have a look at its new website here. Looking forward to seeing you in Granada!

Info on Printmaking Workshops, Summer 2010

A Christmas Wish

January 6, 2010–This was my Christmas wish, to convert my beloved old studio, which was used as a storeroom for too many years,  into a new artist’s residence. We’ve called it El Gallinero (the Chicken House), as it’s located where our old hen house used to be (the chickens have long ago flown the coop). The building work was complicated by unusual December monsoon winds and rain, but it’s finally finished and we just have to finish cleaning it up and painting. Then we can furnish it. In a couple of weeks it should be ready to receive guests, both artists and otherwise.

I’m very excited with this, a new dimension to Pomegranate Editions.

A Photographic Visit to Maureen’s Summer Workshop 2009

July 24, 2009–Maureen’s summer workshop is in full tilt. Participants from the USA, Serbia, the UK and Spain are dividing their time between discovering solar-plate printing techniques, tapas bars and early-morning escapes to the beach.

The air is full of enthusiasm and shared fun, as well as serious learning and art creation. “The secret of success here,” says American artist Karoline Piedra, “is to go to bed late and get up early, taking advantage of the coolest times of the day for working and playing, and afternoons for practicing the siesta!”

See more photographs of the work in progress at this Flickr site.

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A Creative Printmaking Workshop in the South of Spain

Pomegranate Editions is the printmaking and editioning studio of Anglo-Spanish printmaking maestra, Maureen Booth. The studio is located at the edge of a village in the inspiring foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Granada, Spain. Since the mid 1970′s, Maureen has created and printed her own etchings, portfolios, and artist’s books, as well as offering summer courses for print artists and doing editioning commissions for selected clients. This is a 10-minute video interview in which Maureen discusses her work and her personal trajectory.

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Announcing Maureen’s July 2009 Intensive Intaglio Workshops

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An Interview with Maureen Booth of Pomegranate Editions

Q: Maureen, first of all, could you tell us why your workshop is called “Pomegranate Editions?”
A: That’s easy. Spanish for “pomegranate” is “granada,” and that’s where we’re located, in a village nine kilometres from the city of Granada

Q: Could you explain to us briefly how a printmaker goes about becoming a print workshop?
A: The truth is I didn’t start out as a printmaker. That came later. I started out as a painter, and I still consider myself a painter, though I no longer have much time to paint. I got into printmaking in the early 80’s when I had the opportunity to spend a couple of years studying at the printmaking workshop of the Rodriguez Acosta Foundation here in Granada. The foundation was endowed by a member of a local banking family who was a good painter, and run by his nephew who is also a painter and printmaker. The foundation workshop had a selection process, but it admitted all nationalities, so it was a real privilege for me to work alongside wonderful artists from Japan, the UK, Cuba and other places. It was also great to learn printmaking from a real Old World expert, the maestro Jose Garcia Lomas, who recently died, happily leaving behind him a vast tribe of printmakers spread out around the world.

Q: When did you set up your own studio?
A: After the Rodriguez Acosta Foundation workshop closed in the early 1980’s I had the opportunity to buy a complete printmaking setup: an etching press, tables, presses, drying racks, right down to a large selection of papers and inks. In the beginning it was a personal project. I did only my own work, with no intention of working for anybody else. Then I got my first commission to create an edition of etchings for company Christmas presents, which opened my eyes to the business of doing editions, my own and other people’s.

After that I’ve had a lot more etching commissions for gifts, and in recent years I’ve had quite a few jobs editioning other people’s prints. Doing editions by yourself is a hard slog, so I found a bright young assistant and trained him up. That is essential if you’re going to do editions. Depending on the number of plates in a project, two people working together are three times as fast as one person working alone. I don’t have many clients, but the same ones seem to come back again and again.

Q: That’s something your PWC colleagues would like to know more about. Why do you think your clients keep coming back “again and again?”
A: Well, I try to give them professionalism. What does that mean? It means working cleanly and conscientiously. It means meeting deadlines rigorously, and not overcharging. People tend to lose sight of the historical significance of serial art: it made original art affordable to the people!

I like to think that a good printer can bring a little something extra to a plate. I love to surprise my clients with brilliant prints. Also, the paper is a factor. I only use handmade paper for my own work, and I always recommend it to my customers. They love the results. I don’t understand why more workshops don’t use great papers. Fair enough, they’re more expensive, but you recover the extra money you spend on them because you can sell the prints for a better price. Great paper is a very simple and straightforward way to distinguish your own work and that of your clients.

Q: Speaking of clients, where do your clients come from? How do you find them? How do they find you?
A: There are various ways, but at bottom most of them seem to orbit around one common factor: the use of Internet. I confess I used to be an Internet skeptic. I couldn’t understand what my husband was so excited 10 years ago when he discovered the World Wide Web and started using it. But now I’m a believer, too. I love the Internet for its serendipity. It holds so many unlikely and happy surprises. The first job I got over the web was from an agent in Florida who represented a California pharmaceutical company which was organizing a convention in Seville for doctors from all over the United States. They wanted an edition of etchings on a Seville theme. We made the deal in one day, exchanging four emails. I did the edition for them and hand delivered it in Seville, met the client and we had lunch together in a great Moorish patio restaurant there. Later she stopped by my studio in Granada. That felicitous chain of events seemed to me then a near miracle, and it still does. I don’t see how it could have happened without Internet.

I’ve had my own website (www.maureenbooth.com) for quite a few years now, and I’m also on a lot of others such as World Printmakers, the Saatchi Gallery, Flickr, YouTube, and now Print Workshop Central. Our business is, after all, the visual arts, so visibility is all important, I think.

Internet is also useful for buying supplies. You can find all sorts of specialized tools and materials, and they’re usually cheaper. They are so good that they are taking a heavy toll on traditional art supply stores around the world. World Printmakers has a useful section on specialist printmaking suppliers, both traditional and digital.

I also find Internet to be surprisingly useful at the local level. I made some business cards—it’s easy, print them on watercolour paper and cut them up with a skill knife—and I’m constantly handing them out to people who express interest in my work. Here, have a look at my website. And my exhibition invitations always include a “sneak preview” on my site. There are lots of people who can’t make it to the workshop, but sometimes an image on the website will capture them for a later visit. This has occurred more than once.

Latest News

Maureen has just returned from giving a solarplate workshop in a village near Portimao on Portugal’s Algarve coast. The workshop formed part of a delightful rustic art fair mounted by Cuneo Sul-Arte, the local cultural association. See a brief article with lots of pictures on the event here.

Work Samples

(Click on thumbnails to see enlargements.)

Etchings

Angels Over Granada

Sandra

Voladores

Gypsy Women, Granada

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Solar Plate Prints

Chichirriqui, Toy Terrier Sketch

“Una Granada” is “a Pomegranate”

Dauradinha

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Portfolios

“Mis Dulces Miércoles” (1999), a portfolio of eight etchings created and printed by Maureen, edited and with screenprint cover designed by Mararo Moreno and printed by Christian Walter, for the Granada Anti-Cancer Association. Etched and printed by Maureen at Pomegranate Editions.

“Tú” (1989), a portfolio of four screen prints with a poem “TÚ (a Tacuara) by the Granada poet, Eduardo Castro. The screen printing technician was Christian Walter in Granada.

“El Jardín Secreto” (1985), a bilingual portfolio of screen prints with poems by Granada poets Javir Egea, Luis Garcia Montero and Alvaro Salvador, with translations by the American poet, John Ross. Screen print technician, Antonio Marcos González, at El Lledoner screen printing workshop.

The Owl and the Pussycat (1978), a portfolio based on a children’s poem by Edward Lear. Edited by Maureen and printed under the supervision of José García Loma in the Rodríguez Acosta Foundation, Granada.

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Pomegranate Editions Etching Commissions

Packaging up a print order from Paris property company, Tertial, 2003

One of the three prints in the commission

Tertial’s Christmas commission, three prints, 2004

Tertial’s Christmas commission 2002

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Pomegranate Editions Editioning Commissions

This was a recent commission for the Presidencia of the Cabildo de Tenerife, in Spain’s Canary Islands. These are solar-plate reproductions of original historic etchings and engravings from the Museo de Historia de La Laguna. The edition was to commemorate Tenerife’s signature landmark, Mount Teide.

This edition was commissioned by the family of the artist, Francisco Borges (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1901-1994). These plates were 50 years old and had never beed editioned. They made beautiful prints. For more information, see this World Printmakers article on the edition. And this sidebar on Borges.

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Artist’s Books

“Entredós,” ( “Between the Two of Us”) (2006) a book of 11 etchings and 10 love poems by contemporary Spanish poets, etched and printed by Maureen at Pomegranate Editions.

Entredós

Entredós

Amor en tiempos de sequía

Amor en tiempos de sequía

Amor en tiempos de sequía

On Entering the Sea, based on verses by the Syrian poet, Nizar Qabbani

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Classes/courses

Maureen normally devotes the month of August every year to giving printmaking courses in her workshop. This year’s (2009) courses are fully booked.

Here’s what former course participants have said:

“Thank you for everything. I am leaving with a wealth of knowledge, but also wonderfully relaxed. You have been so welcoming. I have come to feel really at home in your studio and in Granada. I couldn’t have asked for a better working holiday. I will most definitely be back to visit.”

Abbie Luck
London

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“This was the best holiday ever! Thank you for all your hospitality. I feel very much at home in your studio and @ your kitchen table. You’ve really inspired me to take art more seriously and to get back to making it. I will certainly keep in touch and hope to return for another workshop!”

Karoline Piedra
Lucerne, Switzerland

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“Estar en tu estudio Maureen es una experiencia mágica y poética. Es como conectar con otro nivel de consciencia. ¡Gracias! Eres grande como artista y como persona.”

Laura Apolonio Roma

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“This isn’t the first course I have done with Maureen, nor will it be the last. To begin with, the place itself is out of a fairy tale. Maureen’s studio is set in the midst of a garden which you fall in love with immediately. She is a special person, ver generous, who likes sharing her vast knowledge of etching and printing, which she transmits in a clear and simple manner. Courses like this bring out your creativity and inspire you to do better, more gratifying work. Besides, everything is shared with your fellow students, with whom you also exchange knowledge and the fun of learning. Maureen’s courses are a real discovery and a gift for the senses. I want to send all my gratitude and a big hug to Maureen, maestra printer and friend.”

Carmen Almécija
Granada

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“This printmaking workshop has been an exhilarating experience for me. Not only is Maureen a wonderful printer, but she is a very focused and generous teacher, and I shall be going home bursting with techniques and ideas to explore and develop on my own. The other course participants were great fun, very welcoming and willing to share their printing experiences and time with me.”

Catheran Ryan
Ireland

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“This week has opened up a whole new set of printmaking possibilities for me. The process of creating a plate can go in so many different directions! Thanks indeed for a very stimulating week. I look forward to following up ideas when back in London. Also thanks for making me so welcome in Granada.”

Peter Esslemont
London

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Links to websites and email

http://www.maureenbooth@maureenbooth.com

http://www.worldprintmakers.com/english/maureen.htm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25086720@N02/sets/72157604283618001/

Email: maureen@maureenbooth.com

Maureen Lucía Booth
Pomegranate Editions
Ctra. Güéjar Sierra, 10
18191 PINOS GENIL (Granada) Spain
Website: www.maureenbooth.com
Email: maureen@maureenbooth.com
Tel: +34 658 953399