(light music) - Have you ever been inside a printmaking shop?

Join me in Birmingham for a visit to PaperWorkers Local, Alabama's only public printmaking cooperative.

We'll learn more about the nonprofit and their facilities from one of PaperWorkers Local's founders, Mimi Boston.

As a part of my visit, I'll get to learn a fun process and put some ink down with a printmaker.

And I have a feeling I might run into a few familiar faces here.

Let's see what it's all about.

Hi, Mimi.

Thank you for having us.

- Oh, I'm so glad you all are here.

- So tell us, tell us about the space.

Tell us about PaperWorkers.

- It's our home, it's our studio.

It's our gallery and we have shows about every six weeks.

And they are a guest artist.

And we also have classes that are taught about once a month on various printmaking subjects like either wood blocks or silk screen and then other topics, paper making and things along those lines.

- So those classes are open to the public.

You don't have to be a cooperative?

- No, you do not have to be a cooperative member.

- So how did you get started?

- We started really with a Facebook group.

For a while, we just met at coffee shops.

It was a Birmingham printmakers group, anybody that was a printmaker.

And we started meeting at Forestall Art occasionally and we met and we'd talk and wouldn't it be nice to have our own space?

Wouldn't it be nice to have our own space?

And after a while, we finally were like, we need to do something about this.

And there was a vacant house on Claremont because it'd been empty for years.

He was gonna redevelop it, we were like, could we do a popup gallery, a popup studio, and rent on a month-to-month basis?

Everybody had to pay their dues by the first of the month, for me to be able to pay the rent by the 10th.

And you know, it was like, bring your own paper towels.

I mean we had no money for anything.

We just hung together for a year or so and then applied for a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and we were able to get some grant money for teaching classes.

Yeah, it was all volunteer and remains pretty much all volunteer.

- What does it mean to be like a cooperative?

What does it mean for artists to work together cooperatively?

- I think it is our strength and has built a community of artists for us.

What it means to be a cooperative is that we share the use of the presses.

We all buy our own paper, but we do have ink that we can share.

But some of us are particular and buy our own ink as well.

And so all of our art styles vary a lot and we can really learn from looking at each other's work.

- What do you you think a space like this means to the creative community here in Birmingham?

- I think it's incredibly valuable.

We're fortunate to have a wonderful museum.

We're fortunate to have a couple galleries.

I mean there are galleries, but these are like artist homes and the work is created here and we are a very welcoming space both to people to see the exhibit, but to try out something new and so this is a wonderful space for people to come and mingle.

- Thank you so much.

I'm about to learn monoprinting here at PaperWorkers Local with cooperative member and artist Liza Butts.

Before we get the ink out, we're gonna learn about her personal visual arts practice.

- The way of the artist is, you know, you're committing to a series of problems.

People are always looking for answers and solutions, but they're maybe not willing to struggle with something for some time.

So I think this act of like wrestling in a creative space is really fruitful.

There was definitely creativity around me.

My mom is an avid gardener and my dad is an engineer.

He was always making things, making instruments, but it was really just sort of my own fixation and just this desire to be discovering things all the time.

Walking and wandering are really important to my creative process.

It's a way of opening up and getting into a more receptive state.

So as I'm walking and wandering, I'd say that process is very analogous to painting.

Going out into the world, looking, seeing, searching, this openness to exploration.

Photographing is sort of the entry point into every image.

Multiple photographs that I cut and paste and build these digital collages with to begin.

And then I'll work through different iterations.

I'm also a printmaker, so printmaking is very intertwined in how I sort of approach painting.

But silk screening has been very influential thinking about shapes in the paintings because when you're working with a photograph in silk screening, you have to break it down into a bit map and you're basically turning it into all these sort of abstract dots.

And it really helped me think about breaking these organic shapes into this sort of framework for the image, I really discovered painting through printmaking.

And it's the transparency of oil-based inks that I was so drawn to.

It allows for a lot of layering, in my prints I work with Akua ink and it's very fluid and transparent.

And so I can create these images that are very dense with a lot of layers of color.

And the same with painting, I work in really fluid washes.

I dilute it with a lot of mediums.

And so it's a way of building an image that takes time and sort of creates this really dense composite of different layers.

In terms of imagery, I'm really drawn to these sort of tricky spaces that are difficult to enter and that are even abandoned.

Buildings that you might drive past and not think much about.

And it's sort of this way of slowing down and thinking also about how the unconscious is something that is often kind of cast aside, but how it shows up in the landscape in areas that are just left to deteriorate and to unravel.

So the work is really dealing with excavation and pulling back the layers of things, but also entrance, like entering into spaces to learn and to see and to know.

Most of the paintings have these sort of obstacles like a wall or a fence or dense foliage that kind of break the entrance into the space and would require some sort of pulling back and cutting through to enter into it.

I'm not particularly painting something to represent a specific landmark or space, but I'm more so approaching the images kind of archetypally so that they're symbolic.

And I think also the work is dealing a lot with origins and me coming home and returning to this place that I grew up in and seeing it with fresh eyes as an adult.

The landscape becomes this sort of record and document for history and layers of time.

And it's this sort of composite space.

Everything sort of bears limitations and these limitations appear in our lives where we have our greatest gifts, we can kind of unbind ourselves to achieve more freedom.

There's a lot to be gained by sort of retreating and listening to your own voice and spending time with that.

But I also think community is so essential and relationships are so essential.

And I've been very fortunate to have like amazing mentors that are around me and reflecting to me that being an artist is totally doable.

I think we live in a world that really bases success thinking through the lens of scarcity.

And I think that that gets projected on artists a lot because we don't always operate within the traditional structure of income that a lot of people do.

And I think just being comfortable to create your own path and do things your own way and know that there's so many different ways to do things.

And ultimately like if you're using your gifts that you were born with, as a spiritual person, I really believe that there is purpose in that.

It will bring you to the places you need to be.

- Welcome back.

I'm here at PaperWorkers Local with my favorite PaperWorker, my mother, Phyllis Clay.

- Hello.

- Welcome.

- Thank you.

- So are you a printmaker?

- Oh, I haven't made a print since high school.

I don't know very much.

This is a challenge for me.

- So today Liza is gonna teach us about monoprinting.

What is monoprinting?

- Okay, so monoprinting is sort of the painterly print.

In traditional printmaking, you have a matrix that you print from.

So that could be like an etching, that could be a lithography, that could be woodcut and then you would make additions of that.

So a monotype just means it's unique and it can't be additioned.

So we're gonna begin with putting some ink down on the plexiglass and transferring the ink to the materials.

And we have Phyllis here who is a master gardener and brought some botanicals from her garden if you wanna tell us what you have.

- This is bell pepper basil, has some nice texture.

It's indigenous to Chiapas, Mexico.

This is Ajaka basil, it's from Germany.

- Let me smell that.

- It's very intense.

Some beautiful croton, can see the texture on the back, I guess we can use either side, maybe the back.

- Well, and so what's also cool about what we're gonna be doing is we're using a paper called BFK Rives and it is not sized and it's 100% cotton and we soak it.

And so basically since it's wet, it's very, it's gonna take the texture of all these materials when we print it so it'll become kind of embossed.

So that's what's cool about this process is it picks up on a lot of really fine details.

So if y'all wanna go ahead and roll out squares of ink and then we can lay the materials down.

- What color you wanna start with, Mommy?

- I think the green.

- Do you wanna do it?

- No, I'd like to see you try.

- Okay, so I'm just.

- Yep.

Back and forth.

Keep rolling it so that we want good coverage and we might have to take it back to the inks lab.

- Same direction or?

- Yeah, it doesn't matter.

We just want it big enough to cover the material.

So that's good.

Yeah.

So then you could do a square of another color here.

- Like that?

- Good, yeah.

And you can kind of roll back and forth to move the ink along on the surface so that it gets even.

That looks pretty good.

- Then again?

- Yeah, you can make it- - A little wider.

Oops.

Is that?

- There you go.

- Let's start with these biologicals.

Do we put 'em down now?

- Yeah, put 'em down whichever side you want to print.

So put that face down.

- We want this side has more texture.

- So put that down on the ink, yep.

- Like that?

- And you can just leave it.

- I think that texture's nice.

And then perhaps this is the last one.

Oh, I forgot about that one.

- Yeah, put that one down.

- Okay.

- Because it all the material is gonna get flattened as it goes through this steel drum.

That's the press.

So now we'll just cover it.

All righty.

So I think that's the first stage of the process and we'll roll it through to transfer the ink and then we'll move to the next stage.

- Okay.

- All right.

Well we play around with this, "Monograph" has another artist to share.

Guadalupe Robinson, a potter that makes stoneware in Huntsville, Alabama.

- Trying to contribute to something that is so old, you know, a tradition that is thousands of years old, if I have something little to contribute to that, I mean that is just a very amazing thing if you think about it, you know?

I was born and raised in Mexico City.

I went to school in Mexico City and then I moved to Huntsville in 1985.

I guess you can talk to many people who work with clay and it just seems like it just grabs you.

You know, it's just such a material that is just amazing when you working with it is so soft.

And then the transformation when it's fire, you know, and just become forever.

So that was always a enchanting thing for me.

But besides that, it was a connection that I was keeping with Mexico.

You know, as far as I was making my pots, I was okay, you know, I'm far away, but here I have my clay so I can survive.

Pretty much shape my pots on the potter's wheel and it is wonderful.

I love watching people throw and I love throwing, you know, it's a really meditative way of shaping something.

It was not just so much the wheel that hooked me after years, but like I say, you know, the process of getting something soft and fragile and turning into something that is gonna last for years, that was really, really appealing.

And for what I'm really known for is using the different colored clays.

I'm really attracted to the earth, the color of the clay, the natural color the better, you know, it is just really incredible.

Clay is just really amazing, you know, I have 40 years, 40 plus years doing this and I feel as excited today as I did 40 years ago.

You know, it just, you cannot get enough of it.

All these stages are really amazing.

I mean the process is so immense that there's always gonna be a new technique to try, a new material to try, a new tool.

So there is always something new coming along, yeah.

The grounding part of it and the joy of it is in the making.

You know, once the body is done, it's a nice pot, but that becomes the pot, you know.

But the process is what is really, what moves something in me, you know?

And I guess it's the same with a lot of artists, you know, the process is what it's all about.

It's good to experiment and to play, but I don't like so much the play part of it.

I mean experiment, have fun with it, but have discipline, if you wanna get to do something that you are satisfied with it, you have to have discipline.

It doesn't have to be a very precise part, it could be a very organic piece, but you get to that with discipline, you know, keeping on with it.

You know, patience is so important on things made by hand.

You cannot just throw things together.

You have to take your time.

And we would thought like that in Mexico.

You need time to just be with yourself, time to be creative and that really fits your soul, you know?

And you have to take care of that.

You have to do that because you know, if you are not taking care of your own spirit, you are lost I think.

Or I know I will be lost.

- And we're back.

Liza, what are we, what is our next step?

- Okay, so our materials are inked and they're here.

We've transferred the ink onto each of the pieces of leaves.

And so now we're gonna have Phyllis, if you want to take the gray ink and we're gonna roll out a flat, that's gonna be the background.

So we're aiming for like 12 by 15 inches.

Very good.

- Keep going?

- Keep going.

Yep.

Doing great.

Basically we're just kind of mapping out the size right now and then we'll go back in and fill in all those.

- A little bit more?

- Yeah.

Definitely more ink on there.

- So Liza and Phyllis, also known as Mommy, you're both painters, right?

- Yes.

- How does printmaking and painting feel different?

- So, you know, printmaking is a little bit less direct of a process.

You know, in terms of mark making, you don't have total control over the surface.

It's not right directly in front of you.

You do if you're carving a block, you know, that's probably the most similar aspect to drawing, but as soon as you're inking it and printing it, you're kind of letting go of control and it's up for chance.

For me, monoprinting is very improvisational.

Okay.

Let's see.

I'll just take a look and see how we're doing here.

Okay, so now y'all can take the pieces of material and arrange it how you want it to print on the paper and put the ink side up.

- Okay.

- Like this, correct?

Let's do it like that.

- Last one.

- Last one.

- Let me pass it to you.

- We'll be able to see each of the different species of basil.

- From our favorite basil head.

- Yes.

Okay.

Now...

So we have our paper that's moist and that way, it's moist so when it goes through the press, it'll pick up on all these fine lines and the paper will become pretty embossed, which is really cool to see.

I'm gonna put the blankets down and then let you turn the press.

You'll feel a little bit of resistance, but you won't feel a lot.

- And I'm going the right direction?

- Yeah, keep on, just keep going.

I'll tell you when.

- How is my technique?

- Your technique is great.

It's like we're on a ship.

- Yes.

- Oh I can tell the difference of it being under there.

- Yeah, you can feel it.

And if it's too much resistance, that means your pressure is way too tight.

It really shouldn't be too much resistance.

Okay.

Just do a couple more turns and then I think you're good.

- Okay.

- Yeah, that's good.

All right, so we have rolled the press pad.

So now I'm gonna pull the press blankets back and we'll do the fun part revealing our print.

Phil, do you wanna pull the print?

So you can do it any way, it's kind of awkward here, but just take the corners and try not to get fingerprints, but you're doing great.

And then just pull that up.

Perfect.

And then lay it on the plexi.

Oh!

- Uh!

- There we go.

- Wow.

- So we have a lot of detail in the leaves and it's cool because the paper is sort of a light gray paper, so the ink prints really nice on top of that, if it's a white paper, you'll see more of the white coming through and you could see some of the embossment on the back.

- Oh wow, on the back you can see that.

This is absolutely beautiful, it turned out.

And even the fine lines on this one.

Yeah.

- So see, it's such a flexible process.

This can be endless and when you get more comfortable with it, you can do more layers and do a lot more complicated things.

So fun.

Thanks for joining me.

- Yes, this is amazing.

Well that's all for me.

Before we go, I wanna share another one-of-a-kind Alabama destination, Spring Creek PROP Farm in Montevallo supplies productions with props across the state and beyond.

Check it out.

- [Len] We rent anything from shopping carts to five ton military vehicles.

- [Christopher] Public safety gear, uniforms.

- We can build any electronics if you need a raft built to the 1820s speck, the way that they were latched together, we have the ability to do that.

- Just about anything you can think of.

- We're a company that provides props, set pieces, custom bills and location shoots for films, commercials, professional theater, local groups and high schools.

There were prop houses for years in Birmingham and I think they closed down.

There is some people in Alabama that have small collections, but I understand we're the only prop house in Alabama.

My parents bought the property in 1972 and renovated the log house that's located here.

I left Auburn in 1976 and I started a cattle farm and bought the property from them in 1982.

So I've been here a long time.

Alabama military vehicle collectors would have a show out at Tannehill State Park.

That's where I met Chris.

A lot of his collection kind of filled in gaps from my collection and my collection kind of filled in gaps for his.

And then I'm like, why don't you come on board and we'll be co-owners?

He's our company mechanic and he builds our electronics and I do more of the acquisition, set building.

You know, if we need something built outta wood, we need something built.

That's what I do.

We're both collectors, we're both scroungers, we buy things that most people won't fool with and then we rebuild 'em and put 'em on set and they work.

- There's no class you can go to to learn how to be an army truck mechanic.

It's just not gonna happen.

Antique electronics, learning tube theory, and how vacuum tubes work.

Military radios in particular, something that I've always enjoyed.

I was in the Army for 12 years and I had a lot of different jobs, at one of 'em I was communications NCO, so I had a lot of hands on with those and really kind of enjoy working with those.

And the US Army's had radios in the military since 1914 and I have some radios that are from the early '20s.

But seeking out that talent, finding the resources, like dude, I do not understand this radio.

And then some guy walks up, he's 94 years old and says, okay, I know what your problem is, but I'm not gonna tell you, it's here, encircles half the radio.

You know, it's just like, okay man.

But you know, you just dig in.

I mean, and that's the only way to do it.

I've always been able to just figure things out and I will keep working on it until it's right.

- Our name's familiar with a lot of people, we do a lot of estate sales.

They'll call and say, well we've got such and such, would you like to look at it?

We always go look at it.

We learn that you go and if you can help 'em out, you take everything.

People like that.

And another thing, we're not a reseller.

In one of the rooms, we have that blue campware.

A friend's mother collected that and their mother passed away and the father was moving, he's moving to the VA home.

We bought it and brought it here and we put it probably a week later, we put it on set and just, you know, they were just thrilled that their mother's collection will be seen in a film at some point in the near future.

All of our buildings and everything are just bursting at the seams.

The past couple of years we've gotten a lot more organized.

We have the camera room and then we have room with luggage and then we have room with other electronics.

- Space is always an issue.

You know, we can put up a 20,000 square foot building or something and just stack everything on the shelves.

But it also takes a lot of character away from the stuff.

And so we have ambulances and we kit those out with everything that a normal ambulance in the state would have.

And we provide guidance on all that.

And so a lot of our spaces, we gotta store stuff in 'em, but if we store stuff in 'em in a way where they're dressed out like a set, then a production company doesn't have to try to visualize what they're gonna need for a particular scene.

They can come in and say, I wanna rent this whole space.

If you're renting stuff from us, we're gonna show you how to use it and we're gonna show you how to use it right.

And you can choose to do it that way, or you can take creative license and do it your own way, but you're gonna know how to use it and to make it look right.

Those are skill sets that normally in Hollywood and movies, those are paid consultant jobs.

We're having more and more productions come from outta state to film here because people see that there is that community and they get bigger bang for their buck.

The ideal production would be a production company that really wants to embrace, like really digging in and putting stuff together that's plausibly accurate.

And at the same time, you know, creative.

And we like the collaborative process as we continue to work in this industry and it continues to grow in the state, it gets better and better.

(light jazzy music)