sp150511 Necromancing the press -

Divining the future of the Seattle Printmakers Center 

With the prospect of yet another round of proposals and conjectures about the viability of his plan for the Seattle Printmakers Center, the author is drawn to the sustainability in posing the question to his muse: “Can I pay for the SPC with press money?”

You have to be prescient and persistent

I heard so many stories in the past about people with an idea who met with rejection again and again and yet they continued to try to succeed in convincing other people with money and power to make a dream come true, and finally, they did meet with a person—or people—who believed in the idea and the dream became reality.

These stories are always associated with projects that we regard as milestones in the arts, sciences, technology, and entertainment. In other words, the successful ones. It seems as though the back story is always one of struggle and persistence. I wonder, is there some combination of timing, erudition, design or personality traits that made these?

In one instance, when Negroponte wanted to start a center for researching new technologies at MIT, he used a set of interlocked rings to illustrate what he meant—each ring representing a technology which, when linked to the other two, yielded a sum of technologies greater than the sum of what each one meant. Telephone, computers, and video, for example, might have been what he showed the people whose support he needed.

In the case of Steven Spielberg, he simply took over one of the offices on a movie lot, put his name on the door and pretended that he belonged until, eventually, he got the attention of the people who believed in him. The list of artists who needed other people to team up with him or her to get the job done and found that team is a long one, always it was not without a long time of struggle and repeated proposals.

So it will be with me as I form the Seattle Printmakers Center. I would like for this to happen sooner, because. at my age, I realize that I may lose some key element in my senses—my sense of humor, my creativity, my vision, hearing, etc.—before I get in front of the “right” people or person.

My press, your press

Among those who already have shown their belief in my plan and my design of etching presses—Tom Kughler, Ric Miller, Ron Myhre, Warren Ralls, Ernest Horvers, Ethan Lind and Isaac Miller to name a few—there is no doubt about their sincerity. However, all the spare cash they have would not be enough to launch the Seattle Printmakers Center.

In the second tier are the people who already have bought a press—and this is about 150 people worldwide, a few of whom bought two or more presses in the past ten years. Yet, even with one-hundred seventy presses sold, this is not enough money. These sales represent only about $180,000 in gross income.

The calculations at hand suggest that over 800,000 more people in the US alone would buy the presses if the presses were made and marketed proportionately—a market of about $8M. The uphill climb for me is like the aspiring movie-maker who needs a half-million dollars to get a movie made, and overcome the doubts of the producers that the movie would be profitable.

Necromancy

Necromancy is the dark art of communing with the dead to find out what the future holds. In my novel, “Ghosts in the New Machine,” I used the idea of time travel to go back and ask what it would have been like if my mini halfwood press had made its debut in Rembrandt’s time instead of the year 2004. I only scratched the surface, as I found that in Rembrandt’s situation, it might have made a difference because the old master, down on his luck, could have worked his way out of debt by making playing cards on my mini halfwood press. He might have survived the stress of having been forced to leave his home. His family might have had better living conditions. His wife might not have died, and his son, too, might have lived if their conditions improved because of the mini halfwood press.

In this way I am necromancing the press—pretending to solve my problems of financing the Seattle Printmaking Center by addressing myself to the press as if this inanimate object embodied the ghosts of dead artists. Like a genie in the bottle—or the powers in that plate in the novel that has the power to take one over time—the press suggests that I, too, could make cards on these mini presses, designed to earn me the fortune that it would take to build the Seattle Printmaking Center.

os150517 My Golden Eggs: Value your customers because they are gold 

 Beginning to survey and update his database to connect with the business plan of Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc., the author reflects on the use of “Golden Eggs” as an expression to describe his patrons and is amazed to discover its use in “Angry Birds.”

Neighborhood of Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc.

When the Seattle Arts and Culture office suggested that art activists in our Uptown Queen Anne collect names of arts and culture groups and artists’ names and the square-footage that they devote to their art and culture, several things happened. I contacted the one who is in charge of tracking artists’ space in Seattle last year when I was surveying likely sites for the Seattle Printmakers Center, and our meeting had a domino effect.

At first, I thought the SPC should not be centralized, but that it should be dispersed in areas of Seattle. Or, it might be centralized, but its outreach programs would go all over—from the Pike Place Market (where Ethan Lind was helping me start up the Buskeresque Etcher) to my neighborhood Mini Art Gallery and beyond.

When I discovered that an apartment building was going up next door to the Mini Art Gallery with 105-units and about the same square-footage for living as I planned at the SPC (69,000 sq. ft. compared to my 60,000 sq. ft. SPC “Media House” plan), it changed my thinking. The ground level would be a place where the Seattle Printmakers Center “visible” activities could be situated.

The Arts and Culture contact encouraged me to meet the architect and anyone else associated with it. The administrative architect pointed me to the developer, owner of the property. It is where Silver Platters used to have its store, next to the parking lot. The entire half-block would become one building, with an plaza inside. It happens that, next door, another apartment building with street-level shops would be built, too, by a different developer.

This is the background to the Golden Eggs in the title. I became aware that I needed to meet more neighborhood people who might give their support and advice as I move forward to create the SPC. Through the architect, I got the dates of the Design Commission meetings where the building plan would be evaluated and, next, the Uptown Alliance Design Framework planners.

At the first Uptown Alliance meeting I attended (after many years’ absence) we were shown an APP called “SeattleInProgress” that laid construction sites over Google Maps. Each construction site was marked with the familiar yellow pointer. I thought of the language in the Seattle Arts and Culture survey, “Golden Eggs” as it referred to the gooses, i.e., the artists who are the ones who lay the golden eggs, arts and cultural benefits in the community. I pictured little golden eggs dotting the Uptown neighborhood, each one indicating an arts and culture resource.

Business plan

At the stage I am in of writing the business plan for the Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc., I now come the section that comes really hard for me: the financials. As I plunged into the task of writing profit and loss statements based on past performance, financial projections under the new plan, and financial analyses of all types, I came again to realize that, if I am one of the geese that lay the golden eggs in Uptown, then it is my patrons who are the “golden eggs.” Because, without my art patrons and people who bought my original presses, then I would be just another goose.

sp150501 Printmakers win under Obama Administration  

Seattle Printmakers Center starts up in 2016 

The author thinks that, despite people loving prints, printmaking and printmakers are not necessarily among those who feel good about the Obama years, printmakers worldwide are about to find out about a good thing that happened during Barack Obama’s watch.

Caveat

The reader may not think there is a connection between President Barack Obama and printmaking, and writing about printmaking in the context of a political theme is outside the art. Actually, printmaking history shows many instances of political crossovers—so numerous that volumes have been written about it. Benjamin Franklin was a printer and an advocate of universal education, and Walter Benjamin wrote an essay on the theme of art itself having changed from a cultural value to a political practice because of mechanical reproduction.

Now, a new experience is opening up, thanks to laws passed in congress with bipartisan approval—the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) act. As a student of Benjamin Franklin, Walter Benjamin, and dozens of writers, artists and technology for fifty years, I am starting the Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc. and in so doing I will demonstrate how the law passed during the Obama Administration, and which will take full effect by the end of 2015, will benefit people who love prints, printmaking and printmakers worldwide.

Printmaking, politics and economics are bound together by their historic record, and one aspect cannot be considered without considering the others. Few, if any, art forms can make this claim; in fact, almost nothing would be known about the arts of the world were it not for printmaking, which is the ancestor of all technologies known to humankind.

Printmakers win under Obama

Despite that you might not among those who feel good about the Obama years, printmakers are about to learn about a good thing that happened on Obama’s watch. The Federal Government enacted the JOBS act in 2010 and, in 2016, printmakers worldwide will find their lives improved—some in small, unnoticed ways, others in big ways.

The important thing, to me, is that education will benefit because printmaking, in the arts, crafts and design, is loaded with educational value. In fact, I think the sum of the educational parts of learning printmaking—its history, art, craft and design—is greater than the parts of art education in general.

Now, thanks the JOBS acts Titles I, II, and III, the Seattle Printmakers Center, Spc. will open for business in 2016, and it will establish a new level of printmaking products and services worldwide.