Kate Marie Meyer, a student at the University of Kansas recently wrote a comprehensive paper on the life and career of long time Chelsea resident and printmaker Robert Blackburn. This month marks the four year anniversary of Blackburn's death and Kate has allowed us to publish an excerpt from her work. (Photo: Robert Blackburn in his workshop.)
We asked Kate why she chose to write about Bob and she explains, "I was given the opportunity to discuss Blackburn as a way to demonstrate the interconnectedness of print culture and print history for my doctoral comprehensive exams. I was given a few questions to pick from, but that option seemed by far the most exciting. His career connects the Harlem Renaissance, the Arts Students League, U.L.A.E., and the Printmaking Workshop, which, while amazing, is surprisingly typical of printmakers. Their careers seem to cross quite a few paths. I also find the concept of master printer as fellow artistic collaborator to be both significant and frequently overlooked in the consideration of prints from the last 50 years. (Photo: Robert Blackburn, Man with Load, 1936)
I guess the short explanation is that if a person wants to write about why prints are neat and interesting, Bob Blackburn is a great person to talk about. I actually enjoyed writing that essay, and comprehensive exams are usually not much of a picnic!"
Robert Blackbun grew up in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance and the economic hardship of the 1930s. While studying at the Art Students League, Blackburn was frustrated by the division between printing and printmaking, and volunteered to assist his teacher Will Barnet so that he might learn the process of printing lithographs. With this lithographic training, Blackburn emerged as an artist-printer and opened Bob Blackburn’s Printing Workshop in 1948. At the Printmaking Workshop, Blackburn taught classes but also provided space for artists to work together and share ideas. He catered neither to money nor the market, and the Workshop often struggled financially. Regardless of limited commercial recognition, by 1957 Blackburn’s reputation earned him the opportunity to print for Tatyana Grosman as she entered the world of collaborative workshops with the establishment of ULAE. After 1963, Blackburn returned to teaching and serving as the central figure at his Printmaking Workshop. Blackburn’s artistic concerns drive the Workshop’s continued emphasis on teaching and collaboration rather than commercial gain. The Printmaking Workshop investigates printmaking as a medium rather than a commercial opportunity. As a non-profit organization since 1971, the Workshop’s funding and distinctively non-elitist environment attracts a racially diverse audience, particularly younger artists.
Robert Blackburn died in 2003. By 1997 the artist and his assistants had taken steps to secure the Workshop’s future, adapting it to become a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Additionally, Blackburn donated most of his extensive personal print collection to the Library of Congress, with smaller samplings also given to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Museo del Barrio. The Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop’s mission today attests to its founder’s legacy, committing to “inspiring and fostering an artistic community of racial, ethnic and cultural diversity for the making of fine prints within an environment responsive to exploration, innovation and collaboration; and to promoting the global appreciation and understanding of the fine art print.”
Ron Adams, born 1934, Blackburn, 2002 color lithograph Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Lawrence Lithography Workshop Archive, 2003.0010
Adams produced Blackburn, at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop under the guidance of master printer Michael Sims. An artist and a printer, Adams trained under master printer Ken Tyler at Gemini G.E.L., worked at Editions Press in San Francisco, then founded his own press, Hand Graphics, Ltd., in New Mexico, which he operated until 1987 when he chose to devote himself to his own art. Blackburn can be seen as a tribute from one master printer to another, who happen to be the only two African American master printers in the country. -- Kate Meyer
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