Professor of printmaking, John Volk re
cently visited New York City to be a visiting critic at the New York Academy of Art. Volk was a part of a committee that explored printmaking as an emphasis for a graduate program. The committee included John Jacob Mayer, the faculty chair person at the NYAA, and Andrew Raftery, a mezzotint printmaker and native to New York City, and Fred Mershimer, acclaimed mezzotint printmaker. They discussed how a printmaking graduate program should be developed and structured. While at the NYAA, Volk also critiqued student’s work and discovered a theme among the pieces. Most of the students’ works depicted landscapes and interior spaces, which Volk found ironic because NYAA is a figurative art school.
While in New York City, Volk also attended the Whitney Biannual. Volk was somewhat disappointed with the selection of works, mostly because the homogenization. “There was a lot of video art that wasn’t up to the caliber that I expected from the Whitney,” he said. “Typically the art of the Whitney biannual expresses the American art scene, but this show felt limited in scope.” Volk also commented on the attendance of the biannual as being very spartan. He remembers in past biannuals the lines stretched around the New York City block to get into the exhibit. This time there were no lines and no wait.
After leaving the boroughs Volk traveled to Philadelphia for a printmaking conference. While there he discussed what printmaking was and joined many panel discussions on the different printmaking processes. As Volk was walking around the conference he noticed a woman sitting at a table holding a mezzotint rocker, so he approached her and asked “do you know how to use that thing?” She said she did and proceeded to show him a demo. Turns out the woman sitting at the table was the foremost mezzotint artist in the United States, Carol Wax.
After returning to Fargo, Volk will integrate a lithography technique he brought back from the Philadelphia conference into his summer lesson plan.
