A visit to the Graphic Studio Dublin – which is celebrating its 50th anniversary – dispels any notions that printmaking is a poor man's art, as SARA KEATINGdiscovered

THERE IS a common misconception that printmaking is a poor man’s art, a reproduction rather than an original image with artistic integrity of its own. However, fine-art printmaking represents a fascinating medium that is more than 500 years old, one that is steeped in esoteric ritual and unique modes of craftsmanship.

Its growth in popularity in Ireland over the past 50 years is largely thanks to the Graphic Studio Dublin, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

Run by artists for artists, the studio is one of the longest-established artist collectives in the country, as well as “the mothership of printmaking in Ireland”, as Jackie Ryan, the studio’s chief executive, says.

As if to reinforce the common misunderstandings of fine art printmaking, a gentleman approaches me as I wait for entrance to the studio’s print works, which is housed in a beautiful four-storey red-brick granary building on the North Circular Road, the old centre of the Findlater distillery in the 19th century. He wants to know if someone inside will laminate a photocopy for him. It is not that sort of printing, I explain, and direct him to Reads of Nassau Street.

I tell Ryan this story over a cup of tea in the bright kitchen at the rear of the building. “We get that all the time, and then you have to explain what fine-art printing is.”

Robert Russell, the studio director, who is passing through on a break from proofing the prints of Limerick artist Donald Teskey, chips in that this is not the only misconception. “People tend to think a print is just a reproduction of an existing image, but it is a process of its own that involves a huge amount of creativity and technical skill. Because a print comes in an edition, people tend not to ascribe the same artistic value, but it has its own integrity.”

The history of printmaking incorporates some of the most important artists of the past 500 years. The best works to come out of Germany in the 16th century were Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts, in which his detailed drawings were carved in relief on wood blocks, rolled in ink and transferred to paper. Throughout the 17th century, Rembrandt worked in the medium too, etching metal plates with a dry point needle in a method known as intaglio to produce images that were reproduced and circulated across Europe.

Were either of these classical artists to step into the Graphic Studio today they would be astonished to see a range of familiar tools. The heavy presses, which look like instruments of torture, are much the same as the ones Dürer, Rembrandt, Turner, Blake and Picasso would have used, as printmaking evolved through the centuries from gothic and renaissance styles to romantic and modernist aesthetics.

“The method hasn’t changed that much, even if styles have,” says Russell. “One of our presses is 150 years old, and it does the same job now as it always has – applying pressure to the plate to make the imprint.”

There have been mechanised developments, but most artists agree that the traditional methods work better. “It is the human element,” says Russell. “You can manipulate the weight where the print needs more or less pressure, and this brings in elements that you would never get if it was mechanised.”

And then there are “all the happy accidents of human error that bring you new ideas about image and colour: how the ink sometimes runs or the acid has more bite if it is warm.”

Gerard Cox, another artist passing through, agrees. “It might be the same image that you are working from, but the prints don’t tend to be reproduced the same. Because you are printing it yourself, each print is a unique, handmade thing.” Ryan interjects: “And because there are several versions available it is more accessible for people, too.”

The Graphic Studio was founded in 1960 by artists Patrick Hickey, Liam Miller, Leslie MacWeeney Elizabeth Rivers and Anne Yeats, who wanted to develop a shared fine-art print space where they could run courses to teach other artists how to use print. In 1988, three artist-members went guarantor for the purchase of a gallery in Temple Bar to exhibit work produced by the studio, and over the past 20 years, as the premises has moved from Mount Street to Hanover Quay to the North Circular Road, the profile and membership of the studio has grown, both nationally and internationally. Most of the major names in Irish art have passed through the Graphic Studio over the years: Tony O’Malley, Louis le Brocquy, Alice Maher, William Crozier, Martin Gale, Seán McSweeney, Patrick Scott, Felim Egan, Brian Bourke. And many of the major names of the future are working there, too, bringing new developments to printmaking, which the Graphic Studio celebrates in several exhibitions this year.

From the beginning the studio put artists’ needs at its core, and that spirit of collectivity continues today, both in the masterclasses run for the studio’s member-artists and in the collaboration often involved in the printmaking process, which is vital for skill sharing among more established and younger artists.

Part of that skill-sharing is technical, Ryan says, “so you have a younger artist printing the work of someone more established, gaining experience on the machines”. But it is also a creative exchange. Members and visiting artists come from different backgrounds (sculpture, painting, photography) and use different printmaking methods (lithograph, intaglio, silk screen).

In the light-filled top floor – all exposed beams and old brick – the environment fosters collaboration and co-operation. The open plan invites conversations and requests for assistance. Proofs hang from the ceiling like drying laundry, mistakes and successes clearly on show. On another visit I made, signing up for one of the regular tours, there were at least two people at work at each large wooden table, and Russell, with the ease of someone used to showing people how printmaking works, brought a bunch of grapes vividly to life with rosin and acid and paint squeezed out of icing bags (“it makes the paint more easy to manipulate,” he said).

That is exactly the type of knowledge, Ryan says, that artists can pass on – “small things that make the craft a little easier”. There are also enormous secrets that can be shared, such as how to make your own press, but you would have to ask the artist James McCreary to divulge the mysteries of his creative engineering feat.

As if on cue to demostrate the wide variety of creative exchange, Jaki Irvine, a visiting artist, appears. Irvine is a video artist with no experience in printmaking. It is her first day at the studio, but she has spent the morning filming Russell at work as he brings Teskey’s prints to life, taking note of the ritualistic movements of the hand-rolled press, but also of the sounds.

“I didn’t expect that the whole building would have its own sounds,” she says, “so I had to run down and get my audio equipment.”

A video installation about the printmaking process? A new evolution that fuses the video image with traditional printmaking form? Who knows? Printmaking is far from the poor-man’s art it is often thought to be. It is one of the richest forms around.

The Graphic Studio GOLD exhibition is at the Galway Arts Festival on July 7th.

Graphic Studio Dublin Members’ Showcase runs at Farmleigh Gallery, Phoenix Park, during July

50 Years of Graphic Studio Dublin and its Visiting Artist Programme will be launched at Imma on September 7, and runs until January 2011