Thursday 15th - Friday 16th January 2026
$220 workshop only
$370 workshop + 2 nights accommodation - self catering
Pre-Print Research - Everything we might do before we go to the studio and get into ink
The workshop is open to all ages and abilities. Your intention might be to make better prints, or see how to create a body of work, or how to shift your thinking. Or you may not have a plan except to experience something new.
This two-day workshop will look at a range of creative processes underpinning all printmaking processes. At the conclusion of the workshop everyone attending will have a group of drawings (visual ideas), notes related to their ideas for making a statement or plan to develop these ideas into print.
Prior to the workshop each person attending will receive a couple readings, links to print research related sites. The readings will be accompanied by reading and notetaking notes. Reading the articles ahead of the workshop is not a prerequisite, but reading these short pieces will foster lively discussion.
Day ONE: Is about research. What is research? Where can research happen? How can we draw the world around us into printed images and texts? How to translate marks and ideas into printmaking?
We will start with introductions and building a community of print related discussion focused on developing ideas in the workshop and beyond. This will be followed by sessions of drawing, discussion, reading, and going on hunting trips for new information, followed by sessions of drawing, discussion reading, and drawing.
Day TWO:
Is about focusing the process on what we have at hand in our studios. Through sessions of regenerative drawing, discussion and reading we will consider the inherently printerly visual qualities and how to realise these in our studios with what we can access to work with.
We will also look at making a statement of intent and from this a work plan for when we return home. The invitation to join the Reading Printers will be extended to all attending to facilitate access to information and social connections after the summer school has wrapped up.
You will need: some drawing materials, a workbook or notebook to draw in. Loose or random papers to draw on. A digital camera of cell phone with a camera. A device that allows to access the internet, so our roaming can be limitless. Some links to, or a list of places you seek information relevant to your modes of printmaking. Some laughs and couple of jokes to share and our aroha for the mātāthuhi/printmaking that we love.
Steve Lovett
Steve Lovett teaches at Elam, Te Waka Tūhura, in the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at The University of Auckland, where he manages the delivery of Print. His studio research captures the potential of inherently printerly thinking to investigate questions of printed images and texts as the syntactical space for the accumulation and transmission of images. Steve Lovett has worked across the related fields of photography, screen printed imagery, type design and performance in a series of collaborations that have led to the present co-labour project with Joanna Cook.
Instagram - stevelovettnz
