Sandy Walker:
I've talked with Alex Katz about his
experiences collaborating with you and with a few other printers. I'm
curious about how your experiences have been working with artists
such as Alex Katz or any one else.
Doris
Simmilenk: Alex Katz has
been incredibly generous in his support of us as printers. He's
wonderful to work with because he knows a lot about printmaking, and
he's extremely professional. He's patient and cooperative and he
shows his appreciation. He has no ego when it comes to the process.
Though he is very clear about what he wants to see, he is very
willing to do what we tell him to do. He understands our expertise,
and he understands what we bring to the process. He's also very
generous in his praise of us in the art community, and the amount of
credit he gives us for the work that's done. This is definitely
mutual appreciation.
Our business is fairly small, and though I feel we have a good
reputation in the print world we (Chris and I) personally prefer a
degree of anonymity. I don't think we are unlike most printers in
that our main concern is to do good work. The most important thing
about collaborating with a particular artist is that the finished
process has an inherent quality. But what we try to do is teach
techniques that are comfortable and natural and fit an artist's
style. It's important that, when people look at a print we've made,
they say, for example, "That's an Alex Katz" rather than "That looks
like a Simmelink/Sukimoto etching." And partly for that reason we
prefer not to use a chop on the prints we make. Documentation and
technical information is always available to anyone who is
interested.
SW: When did you
start printing for Alex Katz?
DS: We started out working with him as contract
printers for Crown Point Press and later, other publishers including
Marlborough Gallery. Our first published print with him was New Years
Eve. It was a lot of fun technically because it involved layering a
number of transparent flat aquatints to achieve a very beautiful
quality of light and color. The image is very simple but technically
there was some very subtle plate-work and the printing wasn't easy.
Soon after that he made a large landscape called Forest that is about
thirty-by-sixty-nine inches and again was technically challenging.
Most of Alex's work is "challenging," which also makes it
interesting for us. The portraits are difficult in that the plates
are in and out of the acid many times in a series of short,
controlled etches. There are very subtle tonal changes in the whole
facial area. It may appear flat but in fact it is not flat. The plate
gets put into the acid for a short time, Alex re-draws the edge each
time it, softening it so there is a gradual gradation which results
in a subtle change in face tones, say from the cheek to the chin.
It's really subtle.
SW: How much of
the process is Alex participating in?
DS: Alex does all of the drawing or painting
depending on which technique he is using. He has incredible facility.
We would prepare the plates and do the more tedious work of blocking
out, but it was amazing to see how quickly he would master a new
technique. It could also be very nerve-racking because after watching
him work for however long on a plate, there would be that fear
element of losing the whole image somehow when we put the plate in
the acid.
SW: Alex
mentioned that you introduced him to some techniques that he'd
never tried before.
DS: Yes, we did a book with Alex for Peter Blum
called Edges with poems by Robert Creely. We found a marker that
worked like a lift ground and were able to send him plates in the
mail and have him draw and return them to us to process. There was a
kind of immediacy to the line that we hadn't been able to get before.
SW: What kind of
difficulties would you run into with Alex's work?
DS: One of the things most difficult about
printing Alex's work is the size of the images. Until the more recent
projects most of Alex's prints have been large and made up of
numerous plates. The editioning takes a long time, and with the more
subtle portraits and large aquatints, there is little room for error.
By using more plates we are able to separate tones and allow more
mixing of colors in the printing. The negative aspect is the length
of time it takes to print.
SW: What kind of
difficulties would you run into with Alex's work?
DS: Alex usually sends a photograph or a slide
ahead of time. Sometimes he sends small paintings that give us a feel
for the color. We usually blow up the image to the size he has chosen
and work out the mechanics of the print in terms of how many plates
and what processes we will need to use. Often we make mylars from the
blow up to have something specific to transfer to the plate and will
try to have a group of plates ready for him to start on so he can
always be working. It's important to keep Alex working and, once he
starts, things change. The image becomes a product of the process and
his control of it. Because many plates are used for one image, and it
takes a few proofs to find the right order and color value for each,
there are possibilities that suggest another departure. the proofing
is the most exciting part for me because we really get to watch the
thinking process, the choices and the decisions that start pulling
the image together.
SW: So that's
when the print takes on a life of its own?
DS: That's when it takes on a life of its own.
You can often recognize the image from the painting it was based on,
but at this point you see how it is different as a print from the
painting. It takes on a life of it's own. There was a certain
publisher who took the same Katz image and made a woodcut, a
silk-screen, and an etching out of it. It was really interesting to
see the same image done in three different techniques; you really
could see how the individual processes of printmaking effect the end
result.
SW: Is he very involved in the technical side of
things?
DS: Well he's not involved in putting on the
aquatint, but he tells us before hand how he wants it to look. He
tells us something aesthetic, and we translate it into technique. We
tend to work with artists who are painters and don't necessarily want
the responsibility of the technical part. Most of them don't want to
wipe the plates or put them in the acid. They are good at what
they're good at, and we try to make the technical part as unimposing
as possible.
SW: Does Alex
seem to mind coming out to California?
DS: He likes to come here. He likes to rent a
convertible and drive around town. He loves the way it looks. Los
Angeles. has that kind of pop culture appeal, and I think Alex
responds to that: The turquoise buildings and the pink buildings, and
the blue sky, you know, it's really visually exciting to him. He
definitely likes to come.
SW: Do the two
of you work well together?
DS: We work very well together, and I think
that's a necessary thing. There are personalities and styles that are
being matched. I can be bossy with Alex because he sees that I'm
involved in his work process. If I tell him what to do, it's to get
to where he wants to be. What's interesting about working with Alex
is that he's always working, he's always doing something, he's always
pushing to the next place, and he can continually find the next place
to go. Because of that he's a lot of fun to work with.
SW: Do you think
there's a big distinction between printers and artists?
DS: Yes, I think there is. I think there are
printers who love the process and work with it the same way a painter
works with a painting process, in terms of their ideas about making
art. But a printer who collaborates with an artist is like a
technical consultant. It's exciting to take a painter's or sculptors
style and translate it into a process of printing which they may have
known little or nothing about. It's fun to give an artist a plate and
a drypoint tool and have them make a few marks just to see the beauty
of that kind of line. It's a way to bring someone into the process
even if they never use drypoint again. We can make suggestions and
generally most artists catch on pretty quickly and take charge. A
printer's ideas can enhance those of the artist because, really, we
are trying to bring the artist's sensibility out. We might teach them
techniques that relate to there sensibility but the end result should
be about the artist's sensibility, not the technique.
****************
See Part I: An Interview with Alex
Katz
