Last fall Bowdoin students created a book of etchings called Another Day with printmaker Liz Chalfin, artist-in-residence for the Marvin Bileck Printmaking Project and director of Zea Mays Printmaking. This spring, the book was selected from more than 2,400 entries to be included in the exhibition New Prints/New Narratives at the International Print Center New York, which Chalfin describes as “the premier printmaking nexus in the country.”

The fledgling printmakers were 25 students from Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Mary Hart’s classes Printmaking I and II. “We worked from 8 o’clock in the morning to 8 o’clock at night for a week,” Hart said. Using a series of plates Chalfin had developed based on ink wash drawings, the students helped select colors and print the images on translucent mulberry paper. They printed four complete editions and 50 individual prints (each student chose a page spread to take home).

“It was a thrill to do this,” said Chalfin. “I came in with a really big project and everybody was so gracious and accommodating— the students buckled down and went right to work with me.”

The finished book is a sequence of 7 full-page prints in hues ranging from warm brown to cool blue, chosen to evoke the progression of a day. Though it can be displayed on a wall, its intended form is that of a looseleaf book housed in a silk box. The semitransparent, layered images encourage the viewer to anticipate subsequent events and remember previous ones, as if they were living through the day themselves.

The Marvin Bileck Printmaking Project was started by artist Emily Nelligan in honor of her late husband, a renowned printmaker. For one week each semester the fund brings a nationally lauded artist to Bowdoin for an intensive workshop with current printmaking students. Read more about Chalfin’s visit here (click “next” for more blog entries).

Photo credits: Linda Alvarez ’13 and Mary Hart