World Printmakers Newsletter, No. 4
April, 2001

Another Record Month
It's been a great month. World Printmakers has broken another monthly page-view record, up from 12,500 to 13,500 in the month of March. This is small time for the big time, but reasonable time for the small time, we think, considering our contents include neither sex nor violence nor Julia Roberts. We got the HomeoStatic Portfolio, the big beautiful print show curated by University of South Florida professor, Brad Shanks, online on World Printmakers and have already had some nice feedback.on it. Brad did a great job of putting together an exhibit of printmakers from all over the U.S.A. (and one from Argentina) around the theme of "homeostasis." (Look it up in the Britannica, you'll be fascinated.) We're looking forward to see what he does next.

Turn, Turn, Turn…
It's been a month of serendipity. First we discovered the Ken Kerslake interview on the Artschools.com website, and they were kind enough to allow us to reprint it. It's a luxurious, intimate first-person overview of a distinguished life in printmaking as artist, teacher and art activist. Kerslake, retired Professor Emeritus from the University of Florida after 38 years, is one of those retired people who can't figure out how he ever had time to go to work, as he remains as active as ever. We found his remarks both instructive and inspiring, and think you will, too.

Shortly after getting Kerslake's interview we received a submission from Young Printmaker, Richard Kennedy. Twenty-seven-year-old Kennedy is looking at the worlds of academe and of printmaking from the other end of the pipeline, but with the same vocation and dedication as the maestro, it seems to us. Kennedy's highly-personal digital prints intensely reflect the experience of an art student about to complete his master's degree who faces that awesome Continental Divide between college and Real Life. Kennedy has a head start on real life, however, as he already has a wife and two children. It will be fascinating to see where the next 38 years take him.

Art Mosca
Our good friend, Bill Fisher (of University-Art-Department-Directory fame, http://billfisher.dreamhost.com), who is something of an art-instigator ("mosca cojonera," the Spanish say; it's not easy to translate) is trying to interest us in promoting some print-portfolio swaps among artists on World Printmakers. If we can work out the nuts and bolts of such a project we'd be tempted to do it.

Digital Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight…
Dot Krause and her digital colleagues, Bonnie Lhotka and Karin Schminke have just announced they'll be doing a three-day workshop, "Beyond the Digital Print 2001" at the Rocky Mountain Digital Arts Center in Denver May 15-17, registration available online at http://www.rmdac.com .

Anything that has "Rocky Mountain" in front of it strikes a sympathetic chord in me, even if it's Spotted Fever. In the summer of 1968 I decided I was going to be a freelance photojournalist and put two Nikons and a pair of jeans in a knapsack and started hitching westwards from Detroit. One of my stops was Pueblo Colorado ("Pee-blo," the locals called it.) There I got out my Nikons, photographed the Pueblo County Fair, wrote a couple of pages of my best rose-colored copy and presented myself in the office of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. They said they would develop the film and if the pictures were OK, they might run it. I continued on to Oregon, then to New York and finally Spain, where I received a letter from my mother. In it was a clipping from the Rocky Mountain News and a check for $15. I knew then that it was all possible.

See you next month.
Mike Booth
Coordinator
World Printmakers