This semester, Lewis & Clark introduced a two-credit class at Mullowney Printing Company in Portland’s Pearl District, taught by Professor of Art History Matthew Johnston. The class, ART 235: History of the Print and Print Workshop, hopes to not only teach students about historical printmaking, but also give them a hands-on understanding of the processes that created the works they study.
Paul Mullowney, founder of Mullowney Printing Company, spoke to The Mossy Log about the course. “Instead of just watching slides and talking about (printmaking) and writing about it, (students are) feeling it with their hands and learning how the process goes,” he said. “It really connects them with the artists like the ones we are talking about today, of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.”
The Mossy Log was present at a recent class session at Mullowney Printing Company. The class began with a lecture by Johnston, introducing students to the work of 19th century artist Mary Cassatt. Known largely for her work as a painter within the American impressionist movement, Cassatt also worked with printmaking techniques that the students had been learning for the past several weeks.
After the lecture, students spread out throughout the large studio space to find their etched plates and prepare to ink them for printing. Etching, a technique in which lines are carved into metal plates by acid, is an example of intaglio printing, where ink is retained in the carved lines of a surface rather than on the exposed surface.
Alli Sanders ‘26 explained the techniques the class has explored so far. “The first two weeks we did woodblock printing,” she said as she waited to ink her plate. “We have been working on these copper plates for the rest of the semester. … The class is every two weeks, and every session we do a new process. So first we did etching, and then we did drypoint, which is like etching without a hard ground. Most recently we did aquatint.”
Students gathered around workbenches with their copper plates, nervous about how the most recent acid baths had changed their work. With scrapers, stained black rags and the sides of their palms, students worked to fill the etched grooves of their plates with ink before wiping away any excess. Then staff helped them align their plates over paper on a large press, turning a wheel to feed the plate and paper between cylinders to apply pressure. The final prints were peeled from their plates and laid to dry.
Johnston emphasized the excitement that printmaking brings. “You are going to be amazed at the images that you produce,” he said. “It’s like opening a birthday present, or a Christmas present. While you’re working on the plate, while you’re inking it, you really don’t know what it is going to look like, but you print it and it is this magical image that appears. So that is what I have consistently been seeing is that sort of real, genuine pleasure and surprise.”
Alongside Mullowney and Johnston, students are instructed by printer Sam Orosz, studio apprentice Jess O’Farrell, and the co-director of Mullowney Printing Company, Harry Schneider. O’Farrell studied painting and drawing at the California Institute of the Arts before earning a Master of Fine Arts in Print Media at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Printmaking, they told me, is an art form for anyone.
“Printmaking is really nice in that you can go from, like, super basic punk rock, like, zine and screenprinting in your garage, or even just carving erasers or linoleum tiles, all the way up to super professional fine art printing, which is what we do here,” O’Farrell said. “It’s pretty easy to get into if you do, like, a DIY method of it.”
Because LC’s art department does not have printmaking as a focus, being able to work with the medium at Mullowney Printing Company has been an exciting opportunity for several students in the class. While the Platteau on campus has a semifunctional printing press, the resources needed to teach and sustain an entire structured program are not currently available through the college.
Clare Corson ‘26 spoke about what the class has meant to her. “I’ve learned a lot. I didn’t really know much about printmaking, and when we have the lectures from Matt, he’ll show us things that I didn’t know you could do with prints, and then we’ve done a lot of things that I also didn’t know you could even do,” she said.
Sanders echoed the sentiment. “I’ve just been wishing to take a printmaking class for all of college, so this was an exciting opportunity to learn more about a medium that I think is kind of becoming a lost art,” she said. “It was really cool to get an opportunity through the school to be in this class.”
For those interested in taking History of the Print and Print Workshop in the future, it will be offered again next fall, and is open to anyone, not just art students. As Johnston said, “No artistic training required!”
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