WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Of all the arts organizations that have grown up in the Upper Valley in recent years, Two Rivers Printmaking Studio tends to draw less notice than most.
For one thing, it’s small. The studio occupies the same footprint it had when it opened in 2001 — 1,000 square feet in the Tip Top Media Arts Building on North Main Street. Its single-minded focus on printmaking disables any potential delusions of grandeur.
So the celebration of the founding artists who set up the studio 25 years ago is pretty low-key. A reception held Friday night at the studio could have been just one of the great many other opening nights at Two Rivers over the years.
But the art in the Founders Show is pretty spectacular, full of Elizabeth “Lili” Mayor’s exuberant woodcuts, Brian Cohen’s glowering etchings and other masterful work from artists who were present at the studio’s creation. And the studio’s mission remains critical.
“I truly believe that community arts organizations are more important than ever,” Rachel Gross, chairwoman of the studio’s board, told the score of people assembled at last Friday’s reception. In a world overrun by technology and screens, “it’s very meaningful to come together and make art by hand.”
Printmaking lends itself to a cooperative model, because it requires the use of heavy presses and other equipment that needs a stable home. Painters can gather anywhere and photography is eminently portable, but aside from printmakers, only sculptors, stone carvers in particular, tend to gather around a single location.
Strafford resident Ian Baldwin brought the studio idea with him to the Upper Valley after a year spent in Oaxaca, Mexico, where there was a cooperative print studio founded by the celebrated Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo. Baldwin gathered other artists, rented the studio space, hired Brian Cohen to run it and set about gathering presses.
“We lucked out by finding an artist in northern central Connecticut who was selling the entire contents of his printmaking studio,” Baldwin wrote in a brief history of the studio. Baldwin, Cohen and a local farmer with a truck equipped with a liftgate went to pick it all up.
The early artists who worked or taught at the studio aren’t easy to sum up. They included Mayor, who studied printmaking and has been primarily a printmaker, as well as Mary Mead, who worked mainly as a sculptor.
“I didn’t know anything about printmaking,” Mead said Friday.
Mayor, though she worked at home, where she had her own presses, was instrumental as a teacher in the studio’s early days, Bert Yarborough, another artist who was involved in the studio’s early days, said Friday, noting that Mayor also was essential to AVA Gallery and Art Center’s growth. “She’s like a bulwark of the Upper Valley art world,” Yarborough said.
Other early artists included Nancy Gerlach, Libby Gardner, Randy Coffin, Jennifer Anderson, Sheri Hancock, Penelope Bennett, Lois Beatty, Judy Lampe, Vickie Herzberg, Ann Semprebon and Nancy Wightman. Many others took the studio’s early classes. The studio fared well under the leadership of Sheri Hancock, who managed Two Rivers for 18 years.
The studio got off the ground because the initial members all paid their dues, which gave the place operating capital, Yarborough said.
Membership, which entitles an artist to use the presses and other equipment anytime there isn’t a workshop taking place, cost $900 a year for nearly all of the studio’s existence. It went up to $1,000 last year, and the studio added a basic membership that costs $120 a year, designed to bring in new members. There are around 15 full members, and the basic level, which gives a member one free day a month, has brought in four new people, said Janet Cathey, the current studio manager.
The studio has equipment for etching, intaglio, wood block, monoprint and solarplate printing. Printmaking was once a dangerous art form that required noxious chemicals to clean printing plates. Two Rivers has slowly evolved into a green studio, and one that also has good ventilation.
Member dues have been key to keeping the studio running, as have workshops and recurring grant funds from sources such as the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation. Though it constantly shows members’ work, commissions aren’t a big part of the studio’s budget, Cathey said.
That budget remains small, under $100,000, Gross, the board chairwoman, said. Growth has not been part of the small community’s plans, but that could be about to change.
Over the years, studio members have fielded inquiries from people who were selling or giving away presses, but the studio didn’t have the space, Gross said. And there are types of printmaking that the studio doesn’t have the room or the gear to teach.
The space in the Tip Top Building next to the studio, which used to house a screen printing shop, is open. It would give the studio twice as much space, and since it’s set up for screen printing, which requires a lot of cleanup, it would allow the studio to teach a popular form of the art.
The studio’s board plans to talk it over, Gross said. “We’re just kind of exploring those ideas,” she said in a phone interview.
In the meantime, it’s showing work from the studio’s original members, all of which is worth seeing. It’s a window into where printmaking has gone in the past 25 years, and a marker of where it’s heading.
Two Rivers Printmaking Studio’s Founders Show runs through April 24. The gallery is open from noon to 3 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays, and by chance or appointment. Call 802-295-5901 or email tworiversprintmakingstudio@gmail.com for more information.
Printing, but words
After taking last year off because they couldn’t find storage space, the good people who run the Five Colleges Book Sale are getting ready for this year’s sale.
If you’re unfamiliar, the Five Colleges sale is a giant used book sale, the proceeds of which benefit Vermont and New Hampshire students at Mount Holyoke, Simmons, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley colleges. This year, the sale’s corps of volunteers is accepting donations from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, with extended hours until 7 p.m. on Wednesdays, and from noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays at the former Rite-Aid in the Powerhouse Plaza off Route 12A in West Lebanon.
The sale, which features around 40,000 used books, DVDs, BluRays, audio books and jigsaw puzzles, is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 24 and 25 and 9 p.m. to 3 p.m. on April 26, when items will be half-price, at Lebanon High School.
More books
Norwich author Edith Forbes is slated to launch her fifth novel, “The Lawnmower Lady,” at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 12, at the Norwich Bookstore.
This book sounds like a hoot: It’s narrated by the late Fay Kirkwood, an acerbic Yankee who lived on a farm, raising pigs and repairing lawnmowers. Her death and unconventional burial sets off a tempest of controversy she can’t avoid witnessing, death notwithstanding.
The Forbes event is one of many this month at the bookstore, including Dan Chiasson, author of “Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician,” his memoir of living in Burlington while Bernie Sanders grew from a small city mayor into the country’s most visible Democratic Socialist, on March 19, in conversation with novelist Makenna Goodman.
The effervescent Anne Fadiman visits on March 24 with a new collection of essays, and Keiselim A. “Keysi” Montás, Dartmouth College’s longtime director of safety and security, reads from his new book about the immigrant experience, “Immigration to Transtierro,” on March 31.