KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Printmaking students at the Kansas City Art Institute brought out the heavy machinery Wednesday to help create large-scale prints.
Part of KCAI's 16th annual Road Roller Day, the students used a road roller - or steamroller - to create the prints.
Students, who were guided by traveling printmaking artist Taro Takizawa, collaborated in pairs for a week to carve four-foot by four-foot print designs that follow the assigned “liquid ecologies” theme.
The “liquid ecologies” theme was decided on because Takizawa has been focusing on climate change issues.
The ongoing drought across Kansas served as part of the inspiration for this year's theme.
“When we found out that Kansas has a water issue, he thought about working with something to do with water and how water affects our lives and ecologies, so that’s how we came about the use of water in our themes,” said KCAI printmaking department chair Miguel Rivera. “Our drawings and designs have to do with water pollution, water evaporation and how water becomes part of our bodies. You will see a lot of ideas revolving around that, how water – or the lack of it – affects us.”
There were no boundaries as to what students could include in their prints - some included beavers, frogs, kingfish, wetland species and aquatic vegetation in their artwork.
A large circle was cut in the middle of the four-by-four feet medium density fiberboards that students used to carve their prints. Students carved different designs on the circular board and the remaining space on the original board.
Each print made on Wednesday was unique because students mixed-and-matched their prints by randomly placing the circular boards within the different border designs and repeating the process.
Students inked up their prints, randomly paired them together and drove the road roller over them all day from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. A crowd gathered to watch and cheers erupted each time a new print was created.
“It’s more of the traditional process that you get to learn and all the technical aspects,” junior Analee Hyacinthe said when asked what she likes most about printmaking.
Excluding the use of the road roller, students used a traditional printmaking process, the same process used in the 16th and 17th centuries.
“It’s different from working in a print studio where we have more specialized equipment, and at this kind of scale there’s kind of a restriction, the printing press is not big enough for these kinds of blocks,” Takizawa said. “So what we do, traditionally, is bring out this steamroller, or road roller, and just run it over these inked blocks. In terms of pressure, it’s more about the combination of the right amount of ink on the block and then the weight from the equipment.”
Onlookers expressed interest in purchasing the students’ artwork, which Rivera originally estimated each print could sell for $200 to $300, depending on the student.
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