Young artists explore during annual Garrison institute
Over the last two weeks, the Garrison Art Center has hosted 16 teenagers for its Summer Art Institute. As they work, talk is at a minimum and phones are dormant — for the most part.
“I’ll let them consult the internet if it’s for the art,” says Melissa Schlobohm, the printmaking teacher.
During five-hour sessions, the students prepared pieces that will be on display at the art center galleries on Saturday (Aug. 9) and Sunday, with a closing reception at 3:30 p.m.
The program dates to 1998 and requires participants to rotate between the pottery shop, the upstairs printmaking nook and the painting and drawing studio, located in the center’s larger gallery space. They also hang the exhibit together.
“Even I get to learn a lot, so this is one of my favorite events of the year,” says Kit Burke-Smith, the GAC education director. “It’s so great to sit in on Dan [Graham Loxton]’s painting sessions and watch him mix colors and explain the theory and science behind it.”
Under the tutelage of Lisa Knaus in the pottery studio, Poughkeepsie resident J.V. Ryan worked on the cover of a macabre clay coffin. Though he prefers sculpture, he says, “I like improving other skills.” Liam Kemp, who lives in Cortlandt, showed off an elaborate Greek-inspired head with blue dots for eyes and intricate hair and eyebrows.
In the printmaking shop, located atop a steep set of stairs, the curriculum covers plenty of ground in an abbreviated time: history, methods, applications and tools. The artists also explore the question, “How is printmaking unique?” and Schlobohm teaches techniques like carving, inking, printing and cleaning up.
Turning the big printer’s wheel is fun but the results may not turn out as intended. “You never know what the final product is going to look like,” Schlobohm says. “Printmakers often take the best images from a series and offer them as limited editions. As with books, the first one is usually the most valuable.”
Preparing battleship-gray tiles of linoleum before inking them up, some students manipulated gouges with blade shapes, like woodcarving tools. Others employed Dremels with various bits, akin to a handheld drill for art.
Haldane junior Rosie Herman leaned into an intricate pattern of leaves, jam jars and strawberries, an image she adapted from Pinterest. “I’m more of a painter, but I appreciate the opportunity to expand my ideas and find my own carving style and voice,” she says.
Another student, a sculptor primarily, chafed at printing. “He kept making prints with airplanes on them, so we created some that he could fold into paper airplanes,” says Schlobohm.
“Printmaking is disorienting because the image is backward and it’s OK if you don’t enjoy it,” she says. “But when you stick to the things you’re already good at, you don’t flex all your creative muscles.”
