David Krut Publishing,
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    So…..

Nathaniel Stern walked into DKW in March, about five months ago, and things haven’t quite been the same for us. Bursting with energy and excited at the new-found potential of the printmaking medium, he set to work on a grande project. Working towards an exhibition at Art on Paper for January of next year and on a print portfolio to be released prior to the exhibition, we have set to creating about 14 new works that vary in technique and size. We are consistently working on several images at once, with myself and two assistants – Niall and Lungi, plus Nathaniel, all working on different elements of each image at any one time.

The whole project started with a computer scanner. Nathaniel has been working on a new digital movement that he has named compressionism. It works as follows: he straps a computer scanner and his laptop onto himself with a harness and sets about scanning things to create new images. He scans bookshelves, lakes, bathtubs, bricks, galleries, the nude figure, and as he is a new father maybe soon we will soon see an image of Sidonie, his baby daughter. When the chosen subject is scanned it creates a very long computer file. It is at this point that Nathaniel’s new technique comes in. He takes the image and compresses the file into a much smaller format that he then hand colours in Photoshop. The works range in size and scale and are beautifully rich in colour. They are very much alive and fantastically real and unreal at the same time. Many of the images created in the process become surreal and unrecognizable. To view the digital images go to his site at http://compressionism.net/

It’s from here that we translate the work into hand printed works on paper. Nathaniel chooses a digital image he would like to work with and selects a detail to focus on. Discussion starts on how best to translate this detail and we choose a technique for him to pursue. As Nathaniel was unfamiliar with the art of printmaking when he walked in the door, he and I had many discussions relating to techniques and methods that were available to him. I think that these discussions have assisted in keeping the project refreshing. What I appreciate is how Nathaniel hastaken on the new knowledge and continues to devote himself to learning and tackling new techniques and visual dialogues.What is also interesting is that he is now working with his hands rather than his computer and has already completed works that involve hand engraving, multiple plate aquatints, spitbite and polyester plate printing combinations, multiple sheet chine colle combinations, among others. He is only now working on his very first traditional etching plate and finding it so simple in comparison to every other technique he has tried. The new etching, however, isn’t as simple as it seems: he will also be including carborundum and the dremel tool to complete the image. We are currently completing the details on yet another image that consists of four large copper plates to be printed side-by-side and on top of each other for sheer scale.

Nathaniel is an artist who brings energy to the project and to the people with whom he works. As he continues to push his own boundaries in the medium, he continues to push ours in the studio and we have recently added the technique of silkscreening to our specialities, thanks to Niall Bingham who is skilled in the medium. The technique has assisted us in obtaining and resolving many of the images for Nathaniel’s aquatint plates.

Also check out Nathaniel’s blog at http://nathanielstern.com/blog/index.php . Apart from being quite entertaining, it is a great source of information and insight into what is happening in Johannesburg.

Keywords: Arts-and-Culture, Print Workshop