PRINTS CHARMING
The Artists’ Press has been rolling out beauty for 25 years
THERE’S an alchemy involved in hand-printing original lithographs. It starts with an image an artist draws, in reverse, on a stone or metal plate. There’s the way oil attracts and water repels the ink. The force of the hand-operated press. The multiple layers of colour and drawing, one stone or plate for each colour, gradually building up the final work of art. A limited number of prints are made and then the plates are destroyed.
In this particular alchemy, Mark Attwood is a wizard. He is the founder and master printer of The Artists’ Press. The son of a printer, he started his print studio in Newtown in 1991. The operation was on such a shoestring that the first client, Norman Catherine, bought his own ink and paper. This year, the studio is celebrating 25 years of collaboration with some of South Africa’s most respected artists including Nandipha Mntambo, William Kentridge, Willem Boshoff, Anton Kannemeyer, Colbert Mashile, Claudette Schreuders and Sam Nhlengethwa.
Attwood and his partner in life and business, Tamar Mason, have been together since they were teenagers. “I’m the smous and Mark’s the technician,” Mason says cheerfully, if somewhat inaccurately — she’s an artist in her own right, working in ceramics and textiles. But it’s true that she’s the marketer, communicator and curator, while Attwood is an internationally trained master printer. It’s his skill and ability to solve technical challenges that draws South Africa’s best art talent to the purpose-built studio outside White River in Mpumalanga, which they started in 2004, and where they live with their two children.
The relationship between artist and printer is a collaboration, practically and financially. The Artists’ Press is the publisher, not just a service provider. “All the work we do is work we love by artists we really enjoy,” says Mason. “If we don’t relate to the images, we don’t publish them. We are one of the few studios in the world that has been self-financing in this way, with no subsidies and not allied to any institution. It gives us the freedom to do what we want.”
Many of these relationships stretch back decades. Nhlengethwa first worked with The Artists’ Press in 1994, when he was the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year. “I have never looked back,” he says. “I fell in love with lithography and the press.” Nhlengethwa, a popular and collectable artist, still works closely with The Artists’ Press.
The studio’s setting means that artists stay on-site, sometimes for weeks. One project that stands out is Qauqaua, a San folk story from Botswana told by Coex’ae Qgam and the first book ever written in a San language. Illustrated by San artists and bound in traditionally tanned goat skin, it contains 11 original lithographs signed by the artists. Mason says the artists loved the lush Lowveld garden, spending hours looking at the plants and asking which were edible and/or medicinal.
“Working with artists, you are always surprised,” she says. “When we invited Conrad Botes and Anton Kannemeyer to work with us we were a bit nervous; after all our kids were little at the time and these guys were the creators of Bitterkomix. But Conrad was soon drawing mermaids for our daughter, and the tall and formidable Anton revealed a fear of our huge Lowveld rain-spiders.”
As well as their business, Attwood and Mason share a passion for the environment. Their innovative spirits are extended to making their work and living space as environmentally sustainable as possible — with solar power, freerange chickens, a thriving food garden and even a micro-hydro turbine station driven by water from their dam.
In celebration of 25 years of The Artist’s Press, there will be a pop-up shop of original limited edition prints by more than 50 artists on Saturday October 1 at Parktown High School for Girls in Parkview, Joburg. You can view and purchase the work of Sibonelo Chiliza, Botes, Karin Daymond, Walter Oltmann, Judith Mason and others; enjoy food, free art activities and music; and attend a conversation between Nhlengethwa and Attwood, exploring their collaboration.