Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Dena Schuckit goes to London

Dena Schuckit has been a printer at Crown Point Press since 1995. Since coming to work here she has become Senior Master Printer. Now she is going to London to pursue an MFA at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design. She won’t be out of touch, she is working on a new printmaking advice column for this website, “Ask Dena” which will be up the second week of April. Get your etching questions ready. She is also writing a forthcoming book in the Magical Secrets series, "Magical Secrets About Gravure: Photogravure and Direct Gravure Step By Step".

I asked her to describe some of her favorite experiences working with artists at Crown Point Press over the last 12 years asked her to boil down her experience into a few words and she said, “I guess I’ve just learned so much about making art here, it’s basically a whole different language – each artist comes in with their own language, and I have learned to adapt to working with different languages.”

Her introduction to printing at Crown Point was working with Tom Marioni, who she has worked with many times since. Her first two week project was with Anne Appleby, who has a methodical approach to image making.

Dena said, “She’s just so in tune with nature and her color sense is so complex. I learned so much about color. If we were working towards a red color then we’d start off with a bright green. We had to figure out how to build the colors that she was looking for.”




Anne Appleby
WINTER, 1999
Color Aquatint

Later she worked with David Nash, which was a faster, messier ride. “He was grabbing these new materials, using the tree rosin in big chunks – just wanting to get his hands in everything.” If each artist has a language, Nash’s language seemed to be spoken faster than Appleby’s.



David Nash
SQUARE CIRCLE TRIANGLE: black in light, 1998
Aquatint reversal

Dena worked with Richard Tuttle first on “Mandevilla”, a project from 1988. She said,
“Working with Richard Tuttle was always a search, an exploration that would happen as we were making the plates. He would sit down and start telling me a story that was one really long and circuitous route. I would just do my best to follow it and eventually we would wind up right back where we started. The projects were kind of like that too.”



Richard Tuttle
Mandevilla 5, 1998
Color aquatint

I asked Kathan Brown, founding director of Crown Point what it has been like working with Dena Schuckit, she said, “We’ve relied on Dena for a long time. She’s such a pleasure to be around as a person. The artists all really adore her, and of course there’s nobody better as a printer. We’ve just been lucky to have her.”

Dena is excited to see how these varied experiences helping artists with very different methods and approaches achieve their goals in etching will translate into her own MFA work. We are curious too. We look forward to reading “Ask Dena”, and "Magical Secrets About Gravure: Photogravure and Direct Gravure Step By Step", and wish her well in her English adventure.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Dena,

Best wishes on your Masters program in London. I hope it is a wonderful experience for you. You have done some amazing work at Crown Point. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to attend two of the summer workshops you taught on etching and photogravure. I look forward to reading your dispatches from abroad in upcoming "Magical Secrets" newsletter.

Bob D.

4:19 PM  

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