SGC Opening Remarks & Keynote: Kathan Brown
The opening remarks kicked off around 8:45am and rolled straight into Kathan Brown’s keynote address at 9:30.
By my count their were almost 1000 seats in the Hilton’s Continental Ballroom and by the end of Kathan Brown’s talk the seats were filled and people were standing!
We’ll start with some numbers. According to conference organizer David Jones’ opening remarks, there are “unofficially” 1600 people in attendance at this year’s SGC conference. Which is huge. Whether it’s the draw of Chicago-style hot dogs or pure printmaking escapism, the recession hasn’t kept printmakers from paying for conference lanyards. In fact, turn out is so high that late arrivers missed out the tote bag (a mainstay of all print conferences) and had to settle for color copies of the conference guide (the copied version is kind of rawly postmodern in a way that Printeresting whole-heartedly endorses).
For those of you who were disappointed at your lack of tote (and are actually looking at Printeresting while you’re at the conference?), find Amze or me tomorrow and we may be able to help you out with a complimentary one from Printeresting. And we have stickers, too. We’re here for you.
Not the best picture but here’s Kathan Brown at the podium.
In keeping with the theme of the conference, Global Implications, Kathan Brown’s keynote covered Crown Point Press‘ long and varied history in international ambassadorship through print. Her talk spotlighted Crown Point artist projects in Japan and China though she also discussed a number of international artists brought to the US by CPP (Jockum Norstrom of Sweden and Francesco Clemente of Italy to name only two).
I knew that CPP had been around for a long time but it’s hard to believe that they are only three years away from their fiftieth birthday. Kathan founded the press in 1962 (though they didn’t make a profit until 1979) and they’ve focused exclusively on intaglio printing since the beginning.
Magical Secrets… four books (and one more to come) compiling nearly fifty years of knowledge from Crown Point Press.