Located in the basement of the Art and Architecture North building on the University of Idaho campus is a studio not many students outside of the College of Art and Architecture have been to before, the Printmaking Studio.
Many students who use this studio are members of the club, The Vandal Print Guild (VPG).
UI fourth year student and president of the club, Nash Johnson, has been a member of the club since last year. He is a secondary education major with an art emphasis.
“Printmaking is definitely my favorite art medium,” Johnson said. “And so, I’ve really tried my best to learn as much as I can about it and be as involved as I can be.”
VPG faculty advisor, UI Assistant Professor and Art and Design Program Director of Graduate Studies, Mike Sonnichsen, has been the advisor for the club for six years. Each of those years, the club has put on their annual Student Print and Ceramics Sale at the Prichard Art Gallery.
The majority of students in VPG are Bachelor of Fine Arts students. Sonnichsen said the reason the majority of students in the club are BFA students is because they need experience dealing with printmaking techniques and tools.
“If we do a project in studio, we sort of require that the person has had a printmaking class because there is some safety and technique issues,” Sonnichsen said. “We like to be able to think about activities for the general public, and invite people in. In the past we did the Steamroller Print event.”
That event was in 2016 when Master of Fine Arts alumnus Reinaldo Gil Zambrano organized the Vandal Steam Roller Project. For this project, VPG used a steamroller to print large-scale artwork created by UI Students, Washington State University Students and Whitman College Students.
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Sonnichsen said because VPG is a smaller club they do not have many events. But the Student Print and Ceramic Sale is their biggest event each year.
“The participation from the ceramics area and students has really come to equal the amount of print work available,” Sonnichsen said. “And with that kind of selection of work, viewers or guests that come in almost always find something that makes a great gift, even for themselves.”
Sonnichsen and Johnson said the sale is successful each year and is busy for most of the day.
“People around here know their art pretty well and love art,” Johnson said. “And student work is something I think is valued and that’s why we get as many customers as we do.”
Johnson said the club is not only an opportunity to connect with other artists, but it also gives them experience for what it’s like to be an artist.
“This is kind of a prequel to what life an artist is going to be. And so that’s probably, I think, the biggest benefit coming from the student perspective,” Johnson said.
Sonnichsen and Johnson said the unique thing about this club and about printmaking as a medium at UI is the camaraderie aspect of it through the shared space and tools used in the medium and studio.
“The thing about printmakers is that we share a studio. We’re not off, you know, isolated,” Sonnichsen said. “And the community and camaraderie that builds up by late nights and projects and stuff like that is a thing that is specific to print, I think it’s almost unique.”
Johnson said sharing the studio is not the only opportunity for students to build a community among each other.
“Helping each other in areas of printmaking where we might need help or haven’t tried something before, that’s an area where another student can step in and assist the other,” Johnson said.
Sonnichsen said because of the nature of printmaking, artists are able to make multiple copies of an original piece. This allows the artists to trade and sell copies while keeping the original if they choose to do so.
The Student Print and Ceramics Sale is Saturday Dec. 14 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Prichard Art Gallery.
“It’s the quickest, easiest way to see a lot of work in a quick exhibition type of venue, because we don’t have things pinned up on the wall, we have them laying on the table,” Sonnichsen said. “But we have the work of dozens of students, and each student has a number of works. And it’s informal as far as an exhibition or framing. But it’s a great way to feast your eyes on what the students have been doing in the past couple semesters.”
Nicole Hindberg can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @HindbergNicole.