Ian Hill: Man about Town
Printers launch their seasonal workshops

Belfast Telegraph , UK
Dec 16 2004

Maybe you’d remember making prints from a cut potato in primary
school? Or from a square of gouged lino? But the craft of making
original prints gets a little more complicated – and a brave bit more
artistic – than that when you get to the work of the skilled
professionals from the Belfast Print Workshop.

Their Christmas exhibitions are now showing in the Waterfront Hall
and the Workshop’s atmospheric base in Cotton Court. That’s at No 30
Waring Street, opposite the onetime Ulster Bank.

At the Waterfront launch, BPW’s new chairman, architect Colin Maxwell
revealed that he’ll be working both sides of the street. For he’s
restoration specialists Consarc’s man charged with fashioning a
boutique hotel out of James Hamilton’s 1860 Italiante banking hall
for pub entrepreneur Bill Wolsley.

BPW manager Struan Hamilton, who was present with his spouse Lisa,
deftly explained the different techniques of printmaking: reliefs
from linocuts; lines scratched into metal etched with acids; the
greased limestones of lithography. Trustee James ‘Jim’ Allen, there
with his accomplished printmaking wife Sophie Aghajanian and fellow
artist-trustee Raymond Henshaw, recalled the 17 years since he and
Sophie first moved to live at the gatehouse of the Arts Council’s
Riddell Hall when he set up the whole operation as Printmaker in
Residence in the Big House up the drive.

James Millar, whose sensuous black and white mythical nudes form the
basis of many a collection, made a number of points.

Firstly, that each print is an original, that none are
photo-mechanical reproductions and many cost under £200. That’s a
fraction of what an oil painting by the same artist would sell for.
He was hinting, obviously, that here are the perfect Christmas or New
Year presents.

Another seasonal gift, added BPW director Paula Gallagher, would be a
voucher for the artistically minded love of your life to sign up to
one of the organisation’s printmaking courses. They run during
weekday evenings or weekend mornings in both January and February
2005, for just £75.

Then a scan of the gallery revealed a veritable United Nations of
printmakers. Sophie, a general’s daughter, is of Armenian descent.
Anushiya Sundaralingam comes from Sri Lanka – Ceylon to older
readers. Talking to complementary therapist Amanda Brady,
photographer Bill Smyth and I learnt that her printmaking
psychotherapist friend Kristine Hanish is a Latvian and that etcher
Kinga Pers is Polish. Artist Valerie Giannandrea’s genes are Italian
and Homeria Kiani Rad’s Iranian.

Amongst the hacks present several looked in vain for a print showing
No 30 Waring Street as they remember it, when it was Benny Conlon’s
A1 Bar. A stranger, who didn’t want to be identified, would have
liked something harking back to even earlier. His search was for a
portrait of a woman who lived on that same spot in the late 17th
century. She was Jane Waring, also known as ‘Varina’, daughter to the
merchant tanner who lent the street his name, and the girl who
refused Dean Swift’s offer of marriage when the esteemed author of
Gulliver’s Travels was but Vicar of Kilroot in Co Antrim.

• till December 31,

–Boundary_(ID_i6lsr6eYUMfMVEhSoMW9Jg)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress