Residency / Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Tyler Green, 7 hours
This week there were no classes scheduled for the classroom; the combination of cold weather and change of semesters tends to result in lower class attendance, Tyler has told me. This week I came in for two prep days, in which I helped clean and prepare the classroom for upcoming classes. At the start of both days I met with Tyler to go over a checklist he had prepared for that day. I tore paper down to size to restock for upcoming classes, cleaned tools used earlier in the week, organized the watercolor mono print supplies and packaged prints that had dried and were ready to be sent back to schools.
Most of the cleaning that the classroom needs is done after a class and with the students. With especially techniques like drypoint and stencil mono printing, it’s an important part of the process that students understand the cleaning up half of making a big fun mess. Sometimes however, instructions about how to best clean tools are half listened to or the class runs late and materials need a second cleaning.
The quiet prep time offers a nice time to balance out the sometimes hectic mornings of a large class. Cleaning the classroom and its materials, or prepping materials like paper or screens helps give an appreciation to all the things needed for printmaking, not just the prints themselves. I wonder how, or if an appreciation for tools can be worked into the demos to make cleanup a more integral part of the lesson.