Ruth Fine: I'm a curator. I was a painter and printmaker first and I'll be that last, I assume. Other things have been in the middle, but I continue to work in the studio. I taught printmaking and set up an etching shop at a small college that had focused only on lithography, and I started a screen-printing program there, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

SW: Where?

RF: Beaver College, outside Philadelphia, at the time a women's liberal arts college. The dean of Philadelphia printers, as he was called, Benton Spruance, taught lithography there for many years. He is one of the people who kept lithography going through the 1950s with his own printing and use of color lithography. But he never got very much into etching or screenprinting even as a teacher. I was followed at Beaver by Judith Brodsky who is now at Rutgers University. I stopped teaching in 1972.

SW: Maybe I could ask you a little background first, if you don't mind? Your first profession as an artist, how have you continued to work over these years?

RF: Secretly. I've worked over all the years. It's not something I talk about very much, or that I even especially want to talk about very much. I don't show except occasionally at universities. Most recently I had a show at Marlborough college in Vermont. And I've never stopped being serious about my own work. I have stayed private about it because people often think what they like or what they're interested in is only what is good. I would never want anybody to think what I do has an enormous impact on what I am interested in because it doesn't, actually.

SW: My theme as editor is that we are not particularly aware of the printer per se. I feel that the printer is very important in the production of prints, very important to an artist. The people to whom I talk say, "Why, I couldn't make the print without them." What we are aware of is the publisher. We're well aware that certain publishers have been important, like Gemini or Crown Point or whatever, but we don't know who the printers were, "we" being the general public.

RF: The general public doesn't know very much about printmaking at all, no matter how hard we work to change that.

SW: I wanted to make this Journal "in praise of printers." I wanted to shed light on them and the feeling that they are very important. I just thought this would be a valuable and interesting thing, at least within our world, meaning the Printmaking Society and wherever that would lead.

RF: I don't disagree with your main point, but I think printers' names are out there in a variety of places. We try to give them credit. Exhibition labels are always a point of discussion, because nobody wants them to be too long. And some staff want the artist's name, period. Over the years, I know we've managed to get the publisher's name on wall labels. Sometimes whether we've gotten the printer's name on the wall had to do with how many printers were involved. The printers list could be a list of twenty-five people. I mean, where do you stop? In a small shop there are only one or two printers. But in some of the bigger shops you have two people who are working in the collaboration phase and three people doing the editions and four people assisting with the editions, so there are a number of people that need to be credited. It gets very involved.

Obviously, ideally, everybody who's done the work gets the credit he or she deserves. And so if you try to cut down, for example in lithography, by not giving the "spongers" credit, well, why shouldn't the spongers get credit? If the spongers don't keep the stone wet, the print is then screwed up. So aren't the spongers as important as the printers?

SW: It's a very good point.

RF: I think the role of the printer varies from shop to shop, and artist to artist, and print to print. In developing a print I think the most important person is the one you're collaborating with from the outset, because that's what I think of as the period of creative input. If that person continues into the printing phase, that's fine. If that person doesn't continue into the printing phase, is the printer really contributing something creative or not? I don't know the answer. But I do think there is a difference between a printer who does the edition only, and a printer who's been involved with the collaboration as well.

SW: You know, we're talking in terms of acknowledgements. Not only are there printers who really do want acknowledgement, but there are printers who don't want acknowledgement.

RF: That's right. And there are printers who do collaborate and printers who don't collaborate. And artists who are willing to allow the printers to collaborate, and artists who are not willing to allow the printers to collaborate. Artists who, in 1984, wouldn't confirm the printers as collaborators, but in 1994, would allow that they are collaborators. So, you're not dealing with the same situation all of the time.

SW: And we're talking about the same thing...

RF: The same printers, the same everything. The point of view has changed. The artists are more comfortable in their skin, so they don't mind sharing where sharing is due. If the artists don't want to share credit with the printers, the printers are not going to try to get credit and thereby alienate the artists. But I do think this has changed radically over the years, and the role of the printers is increasingly acknowledged.

SW: Right. So it becomes sort of a political question then, doesn't it?

RF: I think it's a psychological question.

SW: Not social...sociopolitical?

RF: I think it's psychological. Maybe it's a political question secondarily.

SW: Is it a political question for you or a social question for you in terms of labeling? Wasn't there a time when it would not be considered correct to put the printer on there? It is a time now, maybe which is more democratic, when minorities are being recognized. Is that involved here?

RF: No, I really think it's an aesthetic thing and a personal thing. I think it has to do with what I believe in and having the ability to say this is what we should do. I think a lot of people don't even bring up the subject. If it's less important to a curator that the printer's or publisher's name be mentioned, it doesn't come up. (And I think that's a generational thing; most young curators are knowledgeable and concerned about this.) Sometimes whether that information is on a wall label or not basically boils down to an aesthetic decision. What's that wall label going to look like if everybody's name is on it? And how many people would actually read a long list of names? And how much time would that take away from looking at the print itself? Instead, the full information would be in the catalogue or brochure. If somebody really cares about something, they're usually going to get the catalogue, or they can see it in the library. So what we try to do is give all the information in some form. I don't know that... I don't think it's political, actually. Maybe it is, but for me it's not political. For me it's...a form of accuracy.

SW: Could you state what you believe in on this subject?

RF: I think everybody who works on something should be acknowledged. I do that whenever is possible in one way or another. But I don't know if that necessarily tells anybody a lot unless a viewer already knows a lot. If you don't know what the words mean, if you don't know the difference between collaboration and printing, if you don't know the difference between assisting and printing, if you don't know the difference between the way this shop works and that shop works, if you don't know the difference in temperament among artists and printers... Most information is coded. You have to know the codes. And there's no one easy answer for how giving credit needs to be done.

Every shop has a different way in which this is treated, and every person has a different way in which he or she wants to be treated. I don't think it's as simple as giving credit or not giving credit. I believe in giving credit. But I think most people don't know what kinds of interaction take place in a collaborative situation. If you're an artist and you're with a printer, and you're talking about something, I don't really think anybody, two hours later, is necessarily going to remember which words were used by whom or who finished which sentence.

I think some of the differences also depend on the medium. Woodcut is different, I think, from etching or lithography in the sense that you can prepare your blocks and then go find a printer. I can't make my etching plates and then go find a printer. I don't have the equipment, I don't want the equipment.

SW: Yes. I wanted you to shift hats right now.

RF: I have had no desire to work in etching with anyone but Simmelink/Sukimoto. Doris Simmelink is sympathetic, she knows where I'm coming from. She doesn't say a lot, but whatever she says matters. It really is like a marriage if you're going to get involved in working with someone. I'm not saying it's that way for everybody. But that's how it is for me. I also know that Doris has no agenda, and for me that's important. I've been invited to work by people who I wasn't sure had no agenda.

SW: Meaning, shifting to your other hat...

RF: That's right. I have to be very cautious there, too. I have a friend, Claire Van Vleit in Vermont with whom I also have worked, mainly to make books. She runs the Janus Press. And so those are the people I work with. I've known Doris for more than fifteen years. I've known Claire for forty. And it's comfortable. I've worked in two other situations briefly and they were both fine. I'm going to try working at another place this year that I've been wanting to see: Littleton Studios in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Harvey Littleton, the glass artist, established it. They print from glass, a process called "vitriograph." I was invited there to make prints, but there also is that part of me that's the curator who cannot bear that there's a process out there that I haven't seen happen. Any opportunity to be part of a shop in action is interesting to me both as a curator and as an artist.

SW: Well, can you talk a little bit more about the fact that you couldn't make the prints that you make without Doris. Is that true?

RF: Well... that's very complicated because I do know most of the technical things. I've printed etching and lithographic editions for other artists, I've been a sponger for a litho printer. And I've taught printmaking. I have no desire to do edition printing right now and I don't have time either. I learn things from Doris technically that I have to believe I could have learned on my own, but I certainly enjoyed learning them with her more. It also went faster because I was with her. I don't work on a large scale generally, so it's not heroic acts of printing that I require, although there can be tight registration.

SW: Maybe you don't have the time or the inclination to print. But what is this other thing that happens, say, when you go to Doris's shop as opposed to another one or your own studio by yourself, assuming that you do have time.

RF: I think there's an atmosphere that is created in the shop. There is a setting in which there is the sense that whatever you want to do can be done without any major problems. I think that putting yourself into that kind of atmosphere has to enhance the ability to work in some way. It's intangible. In addition to that you come across situations where you know what you want to do and you don't know precisely how to do it. Then it's great having someone there to offer possibilities as to how to do it, options, because there's usually more than one way to do anything. That's something Kathan Brown talks about. She talks about how when an artist first comes to Crown Point, she wants the printers or the collaborators or whatever she wants to call them (Kathan doesn't like the term collaborator) to set out all the possibilities so that an artist can see all the options. I think that being in a place where anything can happen is very different than being in your own studio or being in a shop where you're the only person who can solve your problems.

I just think the word "printer" is not the right word. I think it's the "printer-collaborator," or the "collaborator-printer." As a curator, I spend a lot of time thinking about these distinctions, and I think they are important distinctions. There are people who have a creative input while the work is happening. I think that's different than a situation where you may not own a press big enough for you to print your blocks. If your neighbor did, you, in fact, could go to your neighbor and do it. It's really a matter of taking time and energy to have somebody print those big blocks. You know how to do it. But you never know in a situation like that when something else is going to come up. If that something else comes up, then it becomes a new situation. Printing something that has already been finished is straightforward and is less of a creative activity. At least it was for me. Having been a printer of plates that were finished, I found it was a meditative activity. It was something I loved doing. And I can see that there's a highly creative aspect to figuring out how to print complicated prints, and then how to do so with consistency.

SW: So when you start using the word "collaboration," you're talking about entering the creative process.

RF: I'm talking about being there while it's happening. Whatever degree you enter into the creative process, it's going to vary again from artist to artist and printer to printer. Being there while the creative juices are flowing is what is important. I think once that's over, you're in a different part of the process. If nothing happens after the signing of that BAT or RTP impression--and, of course, we know that sometimes it does--but if nothing happens after that, then you're in a different place in the process. I don't mean to denigrate the importance of edition printers because, if we're going to have edition prints, we need edition printers, and certainly some are much better than others. I'm in no way saying it's an easy or unimportant thing to do. I'm just saying it's a different thing to do than participating in the development of the matrices used for prints.

About Sandy Walker:

Sandy Walker received his BA from Harvard College cum laude and his MFA from Columbia University. He is a painter and printmaker who has had solo exhibitions at the Fresno Art Museum, List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA, the San Jose Museum of Art and the Riverside Art Museum among many other locations. His work is in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, de Saisset Museum, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.