The Craneway Craft Fair is later this month and I’ll be an exhibitor. It’s on November 25-26, 2023 at the Craneway Pavilion, which is a cool huge building on the waterfront in Richmond, California.

2023 Craneway Craft Fair in Richmond, California

I’ll have a booth at the San Francisco Center for the Book’s annual printmaking festival called Roadworks. It’s a great event that I’ve participated in many times. As the SFCB says,

“Roadworks is a family-friendly, daylong block party featuring public printmaking, bookmaking, and hands-on art activities. It celebrates printmaking and the art of the book in a spectacular way: printing 3’ by 3’ carved linoleum blocks using a 7-ton 1924 Buffalo Springfield steamroller.”

SFCB's 20th Annual Roadworks Steamroller Printing Festival

Where: 375 Rhode Island Street (between 16th & 17th Streets) in San Francisco, CA

When: Sunday, September 24, 2023: 11am – 4pm

I’m excited to be teaching an upcoming reduction linocut class at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. It consists of three Saturday sessions on July 8, 15 and 22, 2023. Here’s a summary of the in-person linoleum block printing class.

Introduction to Reductive Linocut - This class is an introduction to relief printing with linoleum. Students will also learn how to make reduction prints using a technique to make multicolor prints from one linoleum block. Students will learn the step-by-step process that will take their initial design ideas to a small final edition of prints. Topics we’ll cover include linocut supplies, carving techniques, print registration and printing with an etching press. No prior printmaking experience is necessary.

Linocut Class at Kala in July 2023

I'll be one of the many vendors at the upcoming SF Bay Area Printers' Fair & Wayzgoose in San Jose - hope to see you there!

Time: 10am to 3pm, April 29, 2023

Place: History Park, 635 Phelan Ave., San Jose, California

SF Bay Area Printers' Fair & Wayzgoose 2023

IFPDA’s Print Month in October 2021 featured an online program called, Prints in Relief; Print Study Day Presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The IFPDA is the International Fine Print Dealers Association. One of the three speakers was Rachel Mustalish, Conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, who gave a talk titled, Linocuts: Making and Meaning.

I recently went back and watched it on YouTube and thought it was a compelling introduction to linocut printmaking, including its early days. The lino printing portion of the video starts at about the 58:33 mark.

Some of the subjects she touches on in the talk are:

• The invention of linoleum.

• The basics of making a linocut print.

• The Lark, May (1895) by Bruce Porter and other early linocut work.

• The aesthetic characteristics of a linocut and comparisons to woodcut.

• Linocut examples from Matisse, Claude Flight, Sybil Andrews, Lill Tschudi, Cyril Power and Picasso.

• The style and influence of artists associated with the British Grosvenor School.

• Contemporary approaches to linocut from artists such as Chuck Close, Bill Woodrow, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk and Kara Walker.

You might watch it if you’re interested in the history of the medium.

Last year, I worked on a series of linocut prints inspired by desert skies in places such as California’s Joshua Tree National Park and Anza Borrego Desert State Park. The series of limited edition lino prints is called Here and Now and these are a couple of them.

Here and Now II - Linocut Print by Rich Fowler

The linoleum block print above is printed on 14”x11” Stonehenge paper (250 gsm), while the one below is larger and on 28”x22” paper.

Detail of the Lino Print Titled, Here and Now III

You can see a short video of me printing layers of this linocut on Instagram. The finished print is made up of more than 25 block printed impressions.

Both linocuts are available for sale on Etsy.