HAND PRINT WORKSHOP INTERNATIONAL

The workshop returned to the US in 1997 as the Hand Print Workshop International and continues to support an active artist residency program locally, nationally, and with artists from Russia, Ukraine and Georgia as well as other countries including Chile, Israel and Cuba.

The graphic nature of the screen print has opened up into a more painterly medium, not just by appearance but by method of printing. Process became more important in screen printing at the same time it became less so with computer generated art. It is also more sculptural. The properties of acrylic based inks themselves influence not just their use but the outcome. New inks with their hard non absorbent surface reveal additional possibilities for photo based prints not explored before, and ones that borrowed from other print media too, like intaglio. The medium changed, and the workshop changed with it.

To date, HPWI has published more than 300 prints and print related projects. Among them:

Bill Christenberry stepped into the print world at HPWI in 1999. He was attracted by the fluency of the silkscreen process which allows the artist to interpret images in both sculptural and painterly ways, while at the same time being grounded in photography. Between 1999 and 2014 he produced some 20 prints at HPWI. His last achievement there was a six-foot screenprint of his own studio wall with its symbols of religion, material temptation, prejudice, poverty, and a way of life.

Y. David Chung, returned to the studio in 2013 to pursue a large scale sculptural print, Night Rider, inspired by his visit to Pyongyang, North Korea, and the monumental sculptures that dominate the city.

Leonid Tishkov, a long-time artist in the studio, brought his internationally acclaimed PRIVATE MOON project to HPWI. With the assistance of 8 photojournalism graduate students from the Corcoran College of Art + Design, he produced a series of photos and screenprints from a variety of locations, including Antietam National Battlefield, Baltimore’s National Aquarium, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

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