PrintHouston Is Back — This Time with Fun Hands-On Workshops

TO COINCIDE WITH PrintHouston 2022, a month-long celebration of printmaking coordinated by PrintMatters Houston, the Heights-based printmaking studio Burning Bones Press is hosting The Matrix, a series of Wednesday-night workshops where the general public is invited to learn more about the art of printmaking.

If you’ve ever looked at a Warhol silkscreen or a Rembrandt etching and thought, “Beautiful! But how did they do that?” these workshops are for you. Participants can enjoy a glass of wine while Burning Bones artists, all of whom are based in Houston, demonstrate and explain printmaking techniques. The techniques covered include viscosity printing with Blaine Davis (June 8), whose work can be seen at Archway Gallery; solar plate intaglio with Pat Barton (June 15); relief printing with Amber Kaiser (June 22); monotype screen printing with Lillian Evans (July 13); and lithography with Burning Bones Press co-founder Pat Masterson (July 20).

In 2011, artists Carlos Hernandez and Masterson and a village of volunteers from across Houston’s creative community transformed an abandoned furniture store — located in what was then a pretty dodgy area of the Heights — into Burning Bones, the city’s first community printmaking studio. Membership to the studio and its equipment is open to experienced printmakers, but Burning Bones also offers internships as well as plenty of programming geared to the printmakers of all skill levels. The studio also collaborates with publishers, institutions and individual artists, and recently assisted Austin-based singer songwriter Darden Smith in transforming his spooky, black-and-white polaroid photos of the Texas landscape into a series of lithographic prints for a show at nearby Redbud Gallery.

Participating sponsors and exhibitors in this year’s PrintHouston include Archway Gallery, Foltz Fine Art, Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Inman Gallery, Moody Gallery and many others. A visit to any one of these beautifully curated shows reveals the methods used and range of expression achieved in printmaking are as wide-ranging and diverse (and experimental) as Houston itself.