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  • Belfast: Printers launch their seasonal workshops

    Ian Hill: Man about Town
    Printers launch their seasonal workshops

    Belfast Telegraph , UK
    Dec 16 2004

    Maybe you'd remember making prints from a cut potato in primary
    school? Or from a square of gouged lino? But the craft of making
    original prints gets a little more complicated - and a brave bit more
    artistic - than that when you get to the work of the skilled
    professionals from the Belfast Print Workshop.

    Their Christmas exhibitions are now showing in the Waterfront Hall
    and the Workshop's atmospheric base in Cotton Court. That's at No 30
    Waring Street, opposite the onetime Ulster Bank.


    At the Waterfront launch, BPW's new chairman, architect Colin Maxwell
    revealed that he'll be working both sides of the street. For he's
    restoration specialists Consarc's man charged with fashioning a
    boutique hotel out of James Hamilton's 1860 Italiante banking hall
    for pub entrepreneur Bill Wolsley.


    BPW manager Struan Hamilton, who was present with his spouse Lisa,
    deftly explained the different techniques of printmaking: reliefs
    from linocuts; lines scratched into metal etched with acids; the
    greased limestones of lithography. Trustee James 'Jim' Allen, there
    with his accomplished printmaking wife Sophie Aghajanian and fellow
    artist-trustee Raymond Henshaw, recalled the 17 years since he and
    Sophie first moved to live at the gatehouse of the Arts Council's
    Riddell Hall when he set up the whole operation as Printmaker in
    Residence in the Big House up the drive.


    James Millar, whose sensuous black and white mythical nudes form the
    basis of many a collection, made a number of points.

    Firstly, that each print is an original, that none are
    photo-mechanical reproductions and many cost under £200. That's a
    fraction of what an oil painting by the same artist would sell for.
    He was hinting, obviously, that here are the perfect Christmas or New
    Year presents.


    Another seasonal gift, added BPW director Paula Gallagher, would be a
    voucher for the artistically minded love of your life to sign up to
    one of the organisation's printmaking courses. They run during
    weekday evenings or weekend mornings in both January and February
    2005, for just £75.


    Then a scan of the gallery revealed a veritable United Nations of
    printmakers. Sophie, a general's daughter, is of Armenian descent.
    Anushiya Sundaralingam comes from Sri Lanka - Ceylon to older
    readers. Talking to complementary therapist Amanda Brady,
    photographer Bill Smyth and I learnt that her printmaking
    psychotherapist friend Kristine Hanish is a Latvian and that etcher
    Kinga Pers is Polish. Artist Valerie Giannandrea's genes are Italian
    and Homeria Kiani Rad's Iranian.


    Amongst the hacks present several looked in vain for a print showing
    No 30 Waring Street as they remember it, when it was Benny Conlon's
    A1 Bar. A stranger, who didn't want to be identified, would have
    liked something harking back to even earlier. His search was for a
    portrait of a woman who lived on that same spot in the late 17th
    century. She was Jane Waring, also known as 'Varina', daughter to the
    merchant tanner who lent the street his name, and the girl who
    refused Dean Swift's offer of marriage when the esteemed author of
    Gulliver's Travels was but Vicar of Kilroot in Co Antrim.

    • till December 31, www.belfastprintworkshop.org.uk

    --Boundary_(ID_i6lsr6eYUMfMVEhSoMW9Jg)--

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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