It all started with “wanting to share our love for printmaking”, said Jemma Gunning, one of the Bristol Print Collective’s founding members, as she sat in the company of many print and art supplies at the collective’s recently opened studio.
The collective was established by Jemma alongside her batchmates Victoria Willmott and Lisa Davies in 2016, while the trio were still studying printmaking at UWE.
“We all shared this love for teaching workshops and sharing our knowledge,” she added.
“We primarily set up the collective to do pop-up printmaking workshops that were DIY, to get people interested in printmaking and to enable them to be able to do it at home. So we wanted to give them the skills.
Jemma teaches the art of making “quick, spontaneous and energetic print” through mono printing
This included skills to use a pasta maker to print botanical prints or practise the better-known technique of lino printing – all from the comfort of their homes.
When Lisa left the collective a few years after it was established, Jemma and Victoria continued to expand and “keep it going” with other celebrated artists joining in soon after.
Jemma continued: “We then invited John Coe, Luke Wade, Sonja Burnie and Theo Wang to join the collective.
“The six of us together also run Bristol Print Social. Through that, we try and do two or three socials a year, where we hire a space and invite people interested in print to come along and socialise.
“It’s like a soft networking opportunity.”
At their new permanent home within Centrespace, the group of artists continue to teach everything from mono printing and letter press to drypoint, copperplate etching and intaglio printmaking.
An etching press, generally used for intaglio printmaking, is stationed near the studio’s entrance
Jemma believes that for many students, the art of printmaking is therapeutic.
She recalls the scenario of one student: “When I had a studio in Backwell, there was a woman who came in time and again to workshops for three years.
“She said that she had a miscarriage and that this workshop basically saved her. Just coming somewhere, a safe space, doesn’t look at social media or her phone and just immerses herself in printmaking for three hours.”
Jemma also explains that more and more people in recent times are looking to drift away from the vicious world of social media and the internet, looking for more “hands skills” so they can “feel the connection between their hands and the brain”.
Nearly ten years after they first started, the collective continues to have “community focus” at the heart of what they do.
“Wanting to share with people our love of printmaking, we’ve noticed brings people together,” Jemma said.
“It fosters a really strong sense of community, especially because we do longer format courses that go on for eight to ten weeks, which in that time people start to form relationships and friendships.
“And that’s like really magical to see, when you’re facilitating something like that. It’s not only teaching printmaking, all those relationships start to bloom and blossom and that then makes it worthwhile to teach printmaking.”
The collective are hosting their next social event on July 30 at the Estate of the Arts in Bedminster, tickets for which can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bristol-print-social-tickets-1459470939869
All photos: Karen Johnson
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