EVEN with more than 30 years’ experience, printmaking remains a daily challenge for Basil Hall.
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“That’s what makes it exciting,” he said.
“Every time I go to lift that paper off there, I’m not 100 per cent sure whether it’s worked or not.”
The master printer has been leading workshops at the Creators Artspace studio, Lincoln Causeway, culminating in an exhibition on Tuesday of the results from the 12 participants.
Hall said the two-day programs aimed to introduce artists to copperplate etching, in the hope it won’t stop there.
“The whole point of the exercise is not just to come here and do something with them they can never do again,” he said.
“They bring their skills, which are their skills in painting and drawing and their ideas, and I simply give them a different medium or a different surface to make their mark on.”
Hall is now based in Braidwood, but spent 16 years in Darwin, making prints with artists from central Australia, Arnhem Land, the Tiwi Islands and the Kimberley area of Western Australia.
“They’re great artists but they’re doing one-off pieces,” he said.
“You show somebody how to make an etching and suddenly that story can be told many times.
“People always go (prints) aren’t originals but they are, the artist is sitting there doing them right before your eyes.
“There’s no camera involved, it’s all hand drawn, the only difference is you can make more than one of them.”
Creators Artspace president Abi Thompson said a Wodonga Council grant made the Border workshops possible.
“What we plan to do from this stage is train further people in the community,” she said. “We can build up the studio to be able to handle etching.
“We can then bring the standard of printmaking up, feature it more in exhibitions and form small groups that might work together towards it too, all of those offshoots.”
The workshop participants included teachers and artists, some Indigenous, some emerging.
“It’s really good to have a master printer to actually take it from this and develop the plate through to the final print stages,” Thompson said.
“You get the benefit of his expertise as well as your own image.”
Hall said his pupils had been a pleasure to work with and Creators Artspace, part of Gateway Village, had the potential to develop into a good printmaking studio.
“Looking north out at this lovely scene, there’s lots of people around,” he said.
“The light is good, it’s a big airy space, it really works well.”