The Thrill of being Pulled Off the Plate

Printmaking. We all remember it from elementary school.....being given half of a potato, shown how to draw a design on it, carving it out, and then stamping the design onto multiple pieces of paper. But for Artist Lynne Hubner, the early thrill of printmaking was in slowly peeling the freshly inked print off of the metal plate. There's nothing like the sound of it. There's nothing like the curvature of the paper. There's nothing like knowing that the printmaking possibilities are endless.

As an early block printer, Lynne carved linoleum plates. She says they made an impression on her (no pun intended). Thereafter, she began studying with John Ross, Author of the Complete Printmaker (http://www.oldprintshop.com/exhibition/john-ross-retrospective). John broadened Hubner's printmaking toolbox - - so much so that she began to translate her ideas into realized compositions.

Hubner's block print work pays homage to the sensibilities of 1920's photography, the introduction of Eastern composition championed by Arthur Wesley Dow, and the regionalist art that highlights the confluence of man and his environment.

Today, the most sophisticated block print process Hubner uses is the reduction print. The challenge with a reduction print is to create a multi-color image by using only one plate and by making small additions of color from lightest to darkest. This layered process allows no turning back so it compels Hubner to break the rules and mix techniques.

Ultimately, Lynne's love of nature and art converged at Anderson Ranch in Colorado where she studied the nuances of the reduction process with Karen Kunc who runs the Constellation Studio in Nebraska. (https://constellation-studios.net) Hubner continues to be enamored with printmaking because it's grounded in a tradition of documenting and disseminating ideas. She notes that "experimentation, problem-solving, and the thrill of seeing a freshly inked print pulled off the plate can not be matched."

To learn more about this type of art, Hubner suggests art lovers view a simplified process, demonstrated by Sherrie York, at https://sherrieyork.com/reduction-linocut-process.