by Sfona Pelah, CE Instructor (Community Education Program)
Midway Printmakers Exhibit
The Printmaking class at West City Campus is having an exhibit at the Point Loma Library, “The Midway Printmakers Present: The Unknown Art of Printmaking”. The class is part of Continuing Education of the San Diego Community Colleges, taught at West City Campus on Thursday nights. The exhibit runs through Feb 27, 2016. A very well attended opening reception was held on a Sat Jan 23.
Besides having munchies and seeing the beautiful artwork, there was a demo to acquaint the visitors with the process it takes to create the work hanging on the walls all around them. The Printmaking class at West City Campus has been taught continuously since 1984 by Sfona Pelah, MFA, an award winning San Diego artist, fine art printmaker and Adjunct Instructor. Many of the students take the class to refine their skills, and to create their art in a very supportive class environment. There are many regulars that are very dedicated to the Printmaking process and, as the core of the class also provide support to novices and the newcomers under Sfona’s guidance. Many of the students in the class are accomplished artists in their own right.
The Printmaking class provides an opportunity to experiment in a form of art that has not changed much since the middle ages. The medium of Printmaking includes a few techniques, Linoleun / Wood cut, Etching, Dry Point, Engraving, Monotype / Monoprint, Lithography, and Serigraphy. And more recently, digital imaging techniques have also been introduced into this ancient medium. Printmaking is a merger of the technical side of art with the artistic creative side. One of the advantages of Printmaking is that you create an edition of multiple originals. Each print is created from a plate, a matrix, that you created by hand. The plate is manually inked for each print that is printed, to look as close as possible to one another, creating an edition of multiple original prints. Nowadays, Printmaking is not that well known, and many people assume that prints are just a mechanical copy of a piece of art. But when they see the process of creating and printing a plate, they gain a new appreciation for the richness and diversity of medium.
The mission of the Printmaking class is to create artwork in the fine art discipline of Printmaking, and to “spread the word” about this unique, little known, form of art.
Artists from L to R:
Sandra Arvelo Marina Bezzati Bothwell, Christine Calvano, Callie Mack, Sfona Pelah Instructor, Christian Anderson, Susan Freed, Jackie Dotson, Beth March, and Lois Adler-Roussell
Artists not present : Lisa Hartman, Daniel Hagenbuch, Maryan Parto and Cathy Surgeoner