A Visitor

I received a telephone call the other day from a printmaker visiting Toronto who was interested in visiting my studio. I said, 'sure we can have some lunch and chat print'. My visitor turned out to be the very talented Silvia E. Martinez, founder of Prima Ink printmaking centre in Tromso, Norway. We ate and chatted print talk, like I haven't chatted print in some time. It was really good. Our conversation veered towards environmentally friendly and responsible printmaking practices, which we are both interested in and Prima Ink is strongly focussed on. From our earth friendly print chat we got onto Pronto plate printmaking and water soluble etching inks. Silvia was very curious about this Pronto plate thing, so I showed her the basics and she tried one for herself. She was quite pleased with the simplicity of preparing the plate as well as the ease of printing it. Here is some info from Kevin Haas about Pronto plate and how to work it. There are also some very helpful videos on youtube that can supply you with all kinds of short cuts and tips to make your first go successful.

Now I am trying to figure out a way to visit Silvia in Norway so that she can show me some of the photopolymer plate techniques that she uses...and to see Norway of course.