Above left: John Sparks (left) and Ernie Walters.  Above right:  Sam Peters

Sam Peters and John Sparks are the founding members of the Maryland Printmakers.

John has been a printmaking instructor at the Maryland Institute for a number of years. He has taught lithography and intaglio to a number of really outstanding, nationally known printmakers and is an excellent printmaker himself.

Sam has taught at the Maryland Institute part time for the past thirteen years and has just retired. It was through John that Sam was taken on as an instructor. He has taught just about everything except intaglio and collograph. John and Sam met a lot of people over the years who eventually became members of Maryland Printmakers. It was sort of natural that they would get together and give this organization a start.

Reflecting on the start of the Maryland Printmakers, Sam says, “John’s input has been tremendously valuable, when I think back on some of the wacky ideas that I had, I am glad he was along to bring his experience to the endeavor.”

Where did the organization begin and what prompted you and John Sparks to form the Maryland Printmakers?

Probably this whole thing had it’s beginnings in a printmaking forum that Madeline Irvine, the Director of School 33, asked me to put together in 1988. And I was fortunate enough to get Beauvais Lyons, Ruth Weisberg, Bob Blackburn and Judith Brodsky together for a printmaking panel. The panel took place at School 33 and we had a fairly small turnout but it was a very productive evening because the group talked about empowerment and what printmakers could do for themselves. Then, Bob Blackburn gave this really inspirational talk toward the end that got all our juices going and we had a short discussion about the need to form a regional organization in the area. So, a few months later, I approached John Sparks and we met in his studio and talked about organizing a group in the area. At the time we thought, well, we’ll just have Maryland Printmakers as the name it denotes, but, after we got a group together we started having frequent meetings and we decided not to restrict the membership. There was talk of being juried into the group and having only Maryland’s printmakers in it, but we abandoned that idea. It was plain to all of us that the region was not just a Maryland region but a Maryland, D.C., Northern Virginia region and the boundaries in the areas are too flexible. It was probably a good decision because over the years we got a Brazilian contingent of really fine people and people from around the nation and in Europe.

The Maryland Printmakers began ten years ago now, what did you hope to accomplish as an organization? Was it your intent to focus on the membership as a group or to become an educational group for the artist as well as other communities about printmaking in general. A lot of people are not familiar with printmaking.

Well, we hashed over these issues quite a bit in those early planning sessions and there were some among the group who advocated that we serve the members exclusively. There were others who saw the need to have a strong educational component. What we settled on was probably giving priority to the members, servicing the members, and then developing an educational program as we went along. We knew from the get go that we would have to have an educational program if we were to get any funding and to get and maintain a non-profit status.

It was a few years after the organization became established that the non-profit status was given to the Maryland Printmakers. There was a lot of focus on education in the organization at that time. The exhibitions were educational and there were some educational projects taking place in schools. In my own time on the board, I found that the educational projects are very time consuming. Did you hope for education to be a mainstay of the organization?

It was close to my heart. I have done residencies for the Maryland State Arts Council for a number of years and working with small children, and high school students as well, I recognized the need for printmaking education. I was a little naive because I thought funding for these things would be relatively easy to get and, of course, in recent years funding has tightened up, there is not as much available. I was a bit disappointed because there is a real need out there to educate children about printmaking and a lot of art teachers in the public schools don’t have any printmaking background at all. I think the children are shortchanged when they don’t have printmaking projects or units to cover. I hope in the years to come that we can have a bigger educational component, but having worked on at least one of the early grants, I know how much work is involved. Usually, the sum of money received compared to the number of man hours put in to get a grant written and rewritten when it is in the process of being looked at is not nearly enough to cover the expenses of the grant.

This would be a little disappointing for a group to work on a project with very little return. The organization has since focused on incorporating educational and technical information into exhibitions of members works throughout the country and in other countries as well. Do you think this is an valuable area where the printmakers could grow?

I think it is valuable and I think to keep printmaking going we need to do more exhibits with an educational component. I think we have got to get out there and recruit younger members. This is a graying organization, we are all getting on and we need some new blood. And that will keep printmaking going because it’s a beautiful medium and it brings people together in a lot of meaningful ways. I think one of the most wonderful things all of us have gotten out of the organization in the last ten years is the number of friendships that we have all established. These are people that I had no idea existed and a very diverse and interesting group.

The ability to share your knowledge among each other, I assume, is one of the most valuable things in belonging to an organization that focuses so specifically on one particular medium such as printmaking.

It’s paramount. It’s very important to us all. I know very few groups of people that enjoy sharing processes as much as printmakers do and I think most of the printmakers I know are natural born teachers as well. It is this childlike show-and-tell and its a generous show-and-tell. The people quite rarely are reluctant to share those techniques and skills and what they know about it. That is a very pleasing aspect of it.

As a printmaker, I have noticed over the years that there have been numerous advances and changes in the materials and the different processes. It seems to be a very dynamic field. Do you find this to be true in the years that you have been a printmaker?

Well, printmaking follows technology and there has been a tremendous growth, a tremendous number of changes in commercial printing. Those things are filtering down to us and combine that with the advent of the computer and you’ll see the processes change enormously. I mean, photo printmaking has just made tremendous changes in hand pulled prints in the past ten years. I am sort of glad to be involved with the medium during the past two decades because of the changes that have occurred. It was a little difficult as an instructor to keep up with everything going on and I find myself on the internet talking with other printmakers and constantly talking shop just to keep up, especially with new materials.

With lot of new materials out there and a greater awareness of toxicity issues, there is a big movement to clean up the studios. The use of more waterbased and environmentally friendly products that can be taken into classrooms with young students changes the potential place of printmaking in schools. Grade school children can now be handling more materials and learning more advanced techniques.  Is this an area that you would want to see evolving out of the Maryland Printmakers?

Oh, of course. I do think that the members have taken a leading position in introducing those things into their studios and classrooms. There is a great deal of pressure to do this right now and its good. Some of us will lament the fact that we enjoyed the smell of those fumes. Its not only tactile but the odors have pleasant memories for anyone in the field.

So, we are drawing close to our ten year reunion. Do you have any thoughts for where you would like to see the Maryland Printmakers go? Is there anything that you would change about what we are doing now?

From my standpoint, I am pretty well satisfied with the way the organization has gone. I have been really impressed with what people have done with the organization. The only thing that concerns me is that we are all getting older and the membership really needs some new blood. Sounds like vampire printmakers, but we do need some younger members. We need to do some strong recruiting. I think if we just continue doing those things that we have been doing we will see another decade pass.

Any thoughts on how you would go about recruiting younger people? Would you want to bring this more into schools or do more projects that would involve younger children that would hopefully become printmakers of the future?

Well, I know that every board has talked about this for the past ten years. It has always been, “How do we get new members?”, despite the fact that I think all of us were pleasantly surprised in how big the organization grew in these years. I had visions of fifty or sixty people and that was tops. I would imagine that something like four or five hundred people have been members at one time or another. I think we have to figure out a strategy to attract young printmakers and the younger the better. I know in the early years we all went out and brought new members in. We actually did little more arm twisting in those days. Gentle arm twisting.

It is hard to draw people into something they are not familiar with, but now that the organization has established itself as a group, and a fairly reputable group, there is some ground to help encourage more people to become members.

Well written, well edited newsletter, a great website, these things bring people in. And I watch the other regional organizations and some of them make a really fast rise and then start to deteriorate and the quality starts to go in their newsletter. Their activities start to go and I think we have maintained a lot of consistency over the past ten years. Some really good people in the area, really makes a difference.

There is no building per se that the members use to meet as an organization. The meetings are held at various colleges, galleries and universities which is a nice way to expand the membership as well as to introduce everyone to new areas and new printmakers.

Early on a lot of people in the group thought we needed a place, a building, a workshop, and as time went by many of us started to recognize the importance of moving the meetings and get togethers around because there is no one place that this organization should be. Even if we had a workshop, it would be difficult to find a location for it because we almost have clusters of members in different areas of the state, Northern Virginia, D.C. So, it has probably has been a godsend that we move the meetings around. I personally have never heard anyone criticize the organization for being exclusively Baltimore, or exclusively Montgomery County or whatever. I think we all maintain a fair play aspect in terms of the meetings and activities.

Looking into the future, with all the vast changes that have taken place in the world of printmaking and the use of the internet and the ability to photocopy, manipulate images, do you see a future for the Maryland Printmakers in adapting to the changes that are going to be taking place in this world of high tech?

I do. I may have touched on this earlier, but printmaking follows technology and I think printmakers are very flexible and adapt to change very readily and are sometimes hungry for new ways to manipulate and realize an image. I am very optimistic, as long as people love doing printmaking and they are generous enough to show it to other people, I think it will continue to maintain its hold over people like us. Printmakers are an interesting mix, they constantly advocate and teach very traditional methods, but they are also open to new methods as well, so they keep their feet in two different camps and I think the results are very positive and good.

I think that one of the things that keeps printmakers going is the interest in the new technology and as you said the hungriness for new techniques. It is amazing how often printmakers will go to meetings and be scrambling for notes and trying to take down everything that someone is saying trying to learn more about a process or technique or a medium that has been shown and the willingness for everyone to share that , work together. I find that pretty astounding in this field that I don’t see in other fields.

I do as well.