Estampa Wrapup
This year's Estampa International Print Fair in Madrid was perhaps the best ever. With a new, more spacious venue, more visitors than ever before, and a fine-art print offering for all tastes and pocketbooks, Europe's most important annual fine-print event attracted participants mainly from Europe and Latin America. You're invited to have a look at our lavishly-illustrated account: Estampa Madrid 2003 Wrapup.

Downshift-san
What happens when a fast-lane, high-tech American executive discovers Japanese culture? If he's smart he takes off his tie and becomes a slowed-down, low-tech printmaker. See: Peter Miller and the Kamakura Print Collection.

Bive World Premier
This weekend (Dec. 13-14) is the World Premier of Bive, the fictional short-film account of Maureen, the expatriate British printmaker who raises havoc in a Spanish fishing village when she falls in love with a 65-year-old local fisherman, who goes through his own learning and loving experience along the way. This particular World Premier will actually be better than the analogous Hollywood event, as it will be less crowded and free of pesky papparazzi. Actually it's a get together at the Bar de Diego of the crew who made the film, along with a group of friends and villagers in the pueblo of Las Negras (Almería) where it was shot. There, on Saturday night, they will drink some red wine and annihilate all the tapas on the bar.

The main event on Sunday will take place on the beach where your correspondent (back by popular demand) will make a big paella for all of the survivors. Given the romatic theme of the movie, there may actually be some mature Englishwomen there looking for fisherman and some fishermen trolling for Englishwomen. It could get interesting. After the official presentation we'll be offering DVD's of the film for sale on the World Printmakers site.

Look Yourself Up!
We have noted recently that World Printmakers' excellent placement in all the principal Internet search engines benefits not only us but all of the people who are associated with us. If you're one of the World Printmakers artists, or if you've contributed articles to or otherwise collaborated with our site, run a quick search in Google (or any of the others) on your own name. You will be surprised to find the number of references there which are related to your World Printmakers collaboration.

It seems that one of the new golden rules that is emerging in the wake of the catastrophic-for-some rankings shakeup after Google recently changed its search algorithm is: "Keep Good Company," especially in terms of who you link to, something we have always done and will continue to do so in the future.

We'd Like to Hear from Academe
We'd like to boast a bit about the services that World Printmakers renders to the academic community worldwide. If you use our site as a teaching aid, we'd like to hear about it. When we've received a few reports, we'll put them together and publish them on the site.

Coming Soon from Greater Cercedilla
We had heard rumors that one of the world's leading paper restoration workshops (old books, manuscripts, maps and prints) was located in Madrid, and we were determined to pay them a visit when we were in the Spanish capital for the Estampa Fair. As it turns out, the Barbáchano & Beny laboratory is in fact one of the world's leading firms in this field, but it's not in Madrid. It's in Cercedilla, a village in the Guadarrama Mountains three-quarters of an hour's drive north of the city. It's a surprising place to find a world-class restoration establishment and it was a fascinating visit. The resulting interview and subsequent feature stories which Pedro Barbáchano has promised us on print framing, conservation and recovery should be of interest to World Printmakers readers who, according to our site visit statistics, have the issue of the conservation of their works of art on paper among their top priorities.

So, try to have Happy Holidays and a somewhat-less-disastrous New Year. Need I mention that this is practically your last opportunity this year to order your fine-art-print Christmas gifts from World Printmakers? (See our new easy, step-by-step How to Purchase Prints page here.)

See you next month. In the meantime, count your blessings and, ¡Viva el grabado!

Mike & Maureen Booth
Editors & Publishers
World Printmakers
The Worldwide Showcase and Resource Site
for Contemporary Fine-Art Printmakers
URL: http://www.worldprintmakers.com
Email: contact@worldprintmakers.com

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