Re: pinhole-discussion-digest V1 #356

Since I am the charlatan who created this word, I will include a small
article I wrote for an upcoming book. Oddly enough, I am a pinhole artist
for many years, and digital printmaking just happened to be the next logical
step for printing after many generations of photographic silver and
non-silver processes. I approached it with wonder as I originally did
pinhole photography - it is all just great play and joy!

The article:
The Fine Art Printing Process and Me

By Jack Duganne
Printmaking became a way of discovery for me a long time ago. I was first
exposed to printmaking when I was referred to an artist by the name of Max
Hein at UCLA. He was a graduate student in the design department and had a
studio on the top floor of the art department building. I had been looking
for a way to create large prints of images seen through a microscope. I had
the life-changing idea of showing the world what the little seen universe of
blood smears and stained pathology tissue would look like if it were created
large and life size. Max was working in a print media called
photo-silkscreen. The whole process was vibrant and pregnant with
possibility. I was hooked. My imagery didn¹t matter as much as the process
any more. The imagery was just a path into the possibilities that might
occur when combined with other images and colors. My life path changed
during that time. I had been studying pre-med and had always been drawn to
the art of my painter wife. I was always mesmerized by her creations that
seemed to evolve late at night in quiet studios under the house. And now I
understood what went on, when I started playing with concept and color and
form and, most of all, process!

The years following that re-birth were filled with discovery and learning.
I moved from a house into a studio and started teaching photo-silkscreen
printing. I worked on my own work using techniques found in primitive
photography technique books and journals. I woke up each day with new ideas
of new combinations of color and stencil that would create entirely new
images. The process was intoxicating!
 
Using this new found technology, I set myself up as a Master Printer for
doing other artists work in a way never before realized.
I was now going in a new and different direction. This new direction,
however, proved to be difficult. I was creating beautiful work for other
artists and was spending all of my time doing it. I was working with a
process that was extremely labor and materials intensive, not to mention the
toxic element of the inks, cleansers and wash-up solvents. I needed to
simplify! I began to look for ways to make the whole process more
efficient. I began to look to computers and computer technology to help me.
I discovered one day, a process being used by the design department at UCLA.
They had set up a studio in Westwood, California, for a machine from Japan
called a Fuji printer. It was a combination of a large scanner and a drum
printer. The drum was very large and it printed with four colors that were
sprayed from nozzles, which moved across the drum while the drum was
spinning. When the drum stopped, the image, that had been scanned earlier,
was now printed on a piece of paper that had been adhered to the spinning
drum. I was amazed again! Only this time, I was not very impressed with the
final product. It was very dull, drab, color-less, and the image was
composed of many large dots. I found that unacceptable. As I was leaving
the studio, however, I was shown an image that was beautiful. It appeared
to be a color photograph of a woman in a wedding dress holding a bouquet of
multi-colored flowers. I was wrong! It was a print made on an IRIS printer
­ another type of inkjet printer similar to the large drum printer I had
just seen. Now I was impressed!
I was again directed to another source. A man named Steve Boulter, who sold
the IRIS printers. He was working on a project with a color and computer
scientist by the name of David Coons. Together they were developing a
series of prints on the IRIS printer for an artist by the name of Graham
Nash. Graham Nash is a well-known musician who is also noted for a very
large, private collection of modern and vintage photography. In addition,
he is an accomplished and published photographer himself. Steve and David
were helping Graham to create a body of his black and white photographs as
IRIS prints on heavy Arches watercolor paper. David had written an
algorithm that printed a full tone black and white print from the four
process colors printed by the IRIS printer. He is brilliant! The images
printed from the IRIS were beautiful and impressive. I was hooked! I had to
see more, learn more and work with this new machine and technology.
A new journey was created. I now needed to know everything I could about
this new way of creating prints. It was the new printmaking!
In a short while, after I had been spending all of my time printing these
new prints, another person appeared on the scene. Mac Holbert, who had been
the road manager and personal friend and confidant of Graham Nash, had
decided with Graham to start a small enterprise using the IRIS printer as a
new business and venture. Mac wanted to get off the road and settle down
with his wife and new baby girl in a situation that would allow more time
with his family and pursue something new. He agreed to hire me as a
printmaker and together we began the formation of a studio by the name of
Nash Editions. Mac was the head of the studio and developed ways of working
and doing business that allowed it to thrive and grow. I was allowed to do
as much R&D as was needed to make the printmaking side of the studio to also
expand. Mac had a deep knowledge of computer skills and understanding. He
brought in graphics programs and Macintosh and Linux computer systems, which
allowed for a greater and more developed exploration into this new world of
computer-generated printmaking.
During the journey of the beginning days at Nash Editions, an artist for
whom we had created a new body of work, that she was to hang at her annual
Christmas show, raised the question about the name to call the process. I
researched what I believed was to become a standard for printmaking soon.
The process was too beautiful, the results too perfect, for it not to catch
on with a bang! I came up with a word from the French language referring to
the nozzle ­ which would have to be utilized in any digital printing machine
­ present or future. The word is ³giclée². That word has now become a
standard in the lexicon of printmaking terminology.
As time went on, Nash Editions became more dedicated to the development of
photographers and photography-based printmaking. After all, Graham Nash is
a photographer and it was only natural that the studio pursues that
direction.
I left Nash Editions to form my own studio, Duganne Ateliers. The rest of
this story is about that adventure and my preferences for those things that
have become my trademarks of equipment, materials and process.
I love color! All of my own work has been about color and the interaction of
color to image. My choice of printers following my departure from Nash
Editions was to take color into account. I immediately started looking for
printers, other than IRIS printers, which would be able to expand and evolve
the possibilities of greater color gamut. Since most printers of the time
were only printing the process colors, i.e., cyan, magenta, yellow and
black, or a variation of those four colors by adding light and medium cyan
and magenta and/or extra blacks, I wanted something more. I discovered a
printer called the Colorspan DM12. It was a printer capable of printing the
8 values of CMYK plus four new colors. The new colors were Red, Blue,
Orange and Green. I could not believe it! Here was a printer that had the
ability to expand the limited 65,000 CMYK color gamut to a range that
extended into the millions. The new printer that I am using now is the Epson
10600. It is a durable, efficient, high-resolution printer that is able to
keep up the demands of a production, fine art printmaking studio. Work needs
to be done on time and without flaws and the constant need to reprint. I
also have a longevity requirement now because of the archival needs dictated
by galleries, museums and collectors. The Epson uses an Ultrachrome ink-set
that is pigment. That fact alone satisfies most of my clients who have those
requirements.
I have also begun to work with some of the finer photographic printers.
Namely the HP DesignJet 130 and the smaller format, multi-color ink-set
printers ­ the Photosmart 8450 and, most recently, the Photosmart 8750 which
has a new blue and three grays in the ink set groupings. They are a durable
dye set which means that, when coupled with the swellable media from HP, the
inks are in the archival range of over 80 years longevity. I have also
started using the HP DesignJet 130 as a dependable proofer.
Proofing is one of my most critical and valued services. I will work with
clients on an image until they are not only satisfied, but also happy with
the results. Proofing in my studio is a process where the image is printed
at a smaller size on the substrate and printer that is to be used for the
final prints. We will print many, sometimes, in order to capture the color
and essence of their artwork.
Papers and canvases, both hand and machine-made are open to investigation.
I have made some of the most beautiful prints on unstable but gorgeous
paper. Pedro Mayer, a famous and well-documented photographer, wanted to
print on a paper made from bark. This bark is found in the jungles of his
native Mexico and has an incredible look, color and feel. To print on the
IRIS, we had to move the heads back considerably because the paper is very
thick in places and the heads of the printer can hit it and ruin the
surface. After solving those problems, we found that the paper had a
residual chemical make-up that causes the rich black and white imagery to
start changing colors. The colors start going to red and gold and bronzes
of green and blue. The changes delighted Pedro! He is a staunch supporter
of archival inks and papers, but the organic nature of these ink and paper
combinations charmed him. This happens from time to time in the creative
proofing process. For this and other reasons too numerous to mention, we
adhere to a time reserved for proofing, with every artist.
Printmaking is now in the realm of plug and play. In the early days of
trial and error and forging the printers to new levels of creation, we had
fun and never knew the outcome of some of our effort, but that was the
thrill of the process. I love the process and joy that comes from the
random nature of its use. I love not knowing what the result might me, but
continue to try many combinations of approach to see what might happen.
This is for my own work only, of course, but the desire to start combining
new and exciting digital printing technologies with the old hand applied
techniques of non-silver photography and even painting, drawing and collage
is calling me.
 
 

> In a perfect world people would judge by what it is and not what you call it
> and or who made it, unfortunately, the people in the Art circles like fancy
> names and/or descriptions, that is why you have "Silver gelatin prints"
> instead of "black and white paper prints", for instance. So I'd say, that
> if people don't want to live in a dead end street, call it "Cul-de-Sac", if
> galleries won't take your high quality, archival ink jet prints. call them
> "Giclee prints", hopefully once the "inkjet" connotation is removed from
> your print, people will judge your work by its own artistic merits.
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Received on Sun Dec 18 00:20:35 2005