Workshops
June 3rd & 4th, 2015
Damiano Bandini loves letterpress, this is the reason why, at the beginning of the 21th Century he still runs an old historical printing workshop in the town centre of Faenza, bringing on an old passion and ability that pass from father to son. He has got one of the largest collection in use, of very rare metal block-prints and unique artistic wood ones.
Studio Battaglia is a project space run 5 years ago with the aim to put in contact different forms of art and craft: ceramic, visual design, painting, etching, xylography, sculpture and even music. 100 square metres where artists and craftsmen can get together and develop individual projects and collective ones.
Enrico Versari and Alberto Zannoni are two polyhedric artists, based in Faenza, with a big passion for each kind of art; many times they work together creating good vibes and mixing their high qualities and rare capabilities.
Enrico is painter, engraver and professor of Theory of Gestalt.
Alberto attended Albe Steiner Institute in Ravenna and the Tomaso Minardi Etching School in Faenza; he has been working for the indipendent publishing as graphic designer and etcher since 1987.
The workshop will take place at:
DAY 1
Hetching Studio BattagliaVia C. C. Scaletta n.6
Faenza (RA)
(View on Google Maps)
DAY 2
La Vecchia StamperiaVia Giulio Castellani 25
Faenza (RA)
(View on Google Maps)
When:
Wednesday 3rd,Thursday 4th of June.
The workshop will start at 9.30 am
Please, be on time.
At the beginning of the last Century polyhedric artists were used to visualize simple thoughts or sensations combining etching and letterpress and giving them the shape of a little book. Faenza was one of the most productive centers for artist books all over Europe because of its many pottery decorators, engravers and print makers.
You will have quick but really fully immersive experience in etching and letterpress, learning different techniques and procedures in order to make some copies of your own handmade book.
Enrico Versari and Alberto Zannoni will follow you step by step helping you to: develop your ideas from drawings into an engraved copper plate; transmute it in a printing plate thanks to an acid bath in aqua fortis - the term used by ancient alchemists to define the active ingredient able to govern the transformative process of the substance; reproduce it in series using a printing press by hands.
Then Damiano Bandini will help you to compose properly your text (140-character limit, just like a twit) using original Art Nouveau or Futurism woodcut block-prints made by local artists and Italian lead-types of the 40s, 50s and 60s.
This is a rare opportunity to see a printmaker using an old and noisy Heidelberg Platina or a really loud Nebiolo printing press; to smell the inky air of the same poky workshop, La Vecchia Stamperia, where that machine has been operating since 1920, providing the first town newspaper.
REQUIRED SKILL: drawing basics
MATERIALS: pencil, fine cotton-paper, ink and acid, will be provided by the KERNING Crew.
BEWARE OF INK: Please, take an apron with you or, at least, an old T-shirt!
SEE AN EXAMPLE: Artist's Book Workshop 2014
