SeattlePrintmakersCenter

141031 Innovator’s Dilemma  

In 1969 I began asking the two questions that would eventually help shape the Seattle Printmakers Center.

First, “Why is an artist’s success so difficult to sustain?”

And second, “Is artistic innovation really as unpredictable as people think?”

I was three years into a plum job teaching printmaking at the University of Washington School Of Art, and my art career looked bright. But neither my teaching career path nor my art had fully answered those two questions that were always bothering me.

So, at twenty-eight, with the support of my wife and six months before our first child was born, we went to Europe to try to find out with the result that those two questions became my life’s work.

Two of the oldest artists that I could meet—Rolf Nesch, 72, and Stanley William Hayter, 68—showed me you can sustain success, but it’s tough. Whether their creativity was predictable remained impossible to say at the time. Both had survived the Great Depression and two World Wars. By comparison, I had it easy.

Today, I think a lot about Nesch and Hayter because I am now 72. These two showed me you can live a long life and be creative in your golden years—maybe more creative than before. A dozen years later I met another printmaking pioneer, Signora Maria Guaita, 71, in Florence at her graphics school, Il Bisonte.

I have had three decades to think about those two questions: “Why is an artist’s success so difficult to sustain?” and “Is artistic innovation really as unpredictable as people think?” and I saw, in those thirty years, printmaking transformed from the worlds that these three Europeans knew.

They—and hundreds of other artists, publishers, collectors, professors and museums—gave printmaking its designation as “fine art.” I honor them, and they would be offended, were they still alive, if I did not make something out of the lessons I learned from them.

The difficulty of sustaining artistic success is different for every artist who, in the eyes of their followers, “fail.” The failure might be only in the eyes and heart of the artist, in fact, while their supporters think not. How do you measure success in art? Is artistic success measured in terms of money? Or is it many things. Sustaining success is still another matter.

Maybe there is no answer. In an age when money seems to be the measure of success for so many people, it is difficult. As for me, I will measure my success by the success of those who create the Seattle Printmakers Center—whether it is a building or a thing of virtual reality.

Its success will be a matter of answering the second question, “Is artistic innovation really as unpredictable as people think?” For printmaking is not like painting, drawing and sculpture, even though it shares many features with these sister arts.

For one thing, every printmaking technique that is taught and experienced as an “art” began its life not as art at all, but as a performance and a technique which was almost accidental. When cave dwellers were painting and scoring the walls of caves, there were also people printing their hands. They managed to make handprints either by stamping or making silhouettes with sprayed pigments.

The handprint was a kind of fast art compared to the difficult task of painting. I like to think it was a joke art, or that it came about spontaneously in an inspired moment of unpredicted innovation. Is innovation measurable? Can you predict innovation?

When I was a college student, books on creativity were required reading—not only in art but in research science, mathematics, fashion and dance. I don’t know if such books are still required of art students, but they helped me think about human creativity and problem-solving.

My problem now is, given that I am closer to answering the two questions that bothered me in the ‘Sixties, what is the next, best step to take to help progress toward the Seattle Printmakers Center?

If there is a good idea out there, I could sure use it now.