“Life in Print”
An exhibition of original handmade prints from
Tamar Print Workshop at The Printworks, Tavistock, Devon, PL19 0AW
Friday 25th September to Saturday 3rd October
You are invited to the Private View
between 2.00 and 5.00on Saturday 26th September
Click here for more tasters!!
It is exactly 34 years since I embarked on my dream project. The vision, at its embryonic stage during my art college days, had been gestating since the late 1970’s. Once back in Devon, I bought my treasured etching press and set up a tiny studio in a calf shed on the family farm perched high on the side of the Tamar Valley. In September 1992, enriched with childhood memories of life on the farm, I started inviting people to my calf shed to attend a weekly evening class with often no more than 2 or 3 participants.
Eventually we grew in numbers and moved on from those times, both physically and emotionally, to a beautiful new space which my late husband, Hugh, built for us. Years later, we are a thriving community of printmakers who fill four sessions a week and many a weekend, each of us on our own path of discovery and creativity.
It’s apt, almost like coming home again, that we are presenting our next show of work at “The Printworks” in Tavistock. Now a community arts centre, it’s the building where the presses used to roll for the Tavistock Times and Gazette. On the café wall adjacent to the new exhibition space are sepia photos of the machinery which used to operate in the very place we will be exhibiting next month.
It’s a proverbial full circle: this exact month 34 years ago I was stepping into the unknown – a leap of faith which has turned out joyously! And now, in my hometown, our printmaking group is exhibiting in a venue where over 50 years ago you might have heard the click, clunk and roll of the printing presses, just as we hear the whirr of my etching press in my studio today. But I guarantee the sight of newspapers rolling off the presses then, compares little to the experience now, of craning our necks over the press as we wait on tenterhooks for that heart stopping moment – “the big reveal”!
I am proud to have been able to provide the resources that have facilitated the beautiful fine art printmaking that continues to flourish at Tamar Print Workshop.
Come and enjoy “Life in Print” for yourself. It would be lovely to see you at the Private View – we are all looking forward to meeting you and having a chat!
