Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
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An Interview with Greg Lago, Wood Engraver & Renaissance Man

 

I consider myself incredibly lucky to know Greg Lago, the renaissance man of Northern New York. Lago is a wood engraver, printmaker, painter, framer, and walking almanac…just to name a few positions off the top of my head. His space, Winged Bull Studio in Clayton, NY is a haven of rich dark wood floors and walls. In it, sits an antique Vandercook letterpress, a hand-cranking proof press from the 1960s. His backyard is an awesome tea garden with fragrant herbs in the summertime.

 

Summer nostalgia…

 

Here is a little Q & A with Greg Lago, one of all-time my favorite artists, a good friend, and a true sage…

 

Robin McDowell: What is the story of your Vandercook Press?

Greg Lago: When I attended Buffalo State, the old printmaking equipment was being scrapped out to make room for the more high tech computers being bought.  This press was a gift from one of my professors.  The only cost to me was the five hundred dollars to move all twelve hundred pounds of it from there to here.  And also I needed to reinforce the floor that it would sit upon.

 

RM: What was your major in college?  Fine Arts?

GL: Yes.  Printmaking, specifically.

 

RM: What is the most unique or experimental item you have run through this press?

GL: I print traditional stuff, mostly.  The most temperamental things I put through are my homemade engraving blocks because they are so uneven.

I have to shim the block with pieces of tissue paper and pack the tympan just so.  Sometimes I have to put blankets over the image to get just the pressure I am looking for.  Surprisingly enough, I have never broken this press.  Once, a while back, I accidentally printed a gripper bar on a press at school and snapped the thing right off.

 

RM: How do you feel about the use of computer technology in printmaking?

GL: I always say that, “I bridge technologies”.  My specialty and greatest interest is relief printing and lithography, both of which have become out of fashion.  But eventually, people may come to realize that the letterpress, in its directness and simplicity is easier than the computer in a way.  I have spent a good deal of time looking at old Chinese and Japanese wood prints.  They are in no way technically sound according to today’s standards, but we must realize that these prints are beautiful for their uniqueness and imperfections.  These prints pre-date Gutenberg.

If we think of printmaking in that way, we realize that printmaking was never meant to be a serial concept.  Andy Warhol introduced the serial concept of printmaking that most people recognize today.

 

Officer’s Mess

 

RM: What are your thoughts on printmaking, especially with the Vandercook, as performance art?

GL: This is a very interesting concept.  I am thinking about cylinder presses, and especially the Windmill Press.  Paper is fed into these machines in a rhythm.  On the Windmill Press, the paper goes in and down and then up.  On the Vandercook, the rhythm is the bodily motion of springing back.  I would say that there is a performative aspect to my method of printing, in that I meticulously hand ink all of my prints.  When we think of printing as a trade, this conjures images of the old time printers, challenging one another basically to printing duels…how many copies can you physically crank out…

 

RM: As a traditional and also ornamental craftsman, how might you respond to Adolf Loos’ sentiments from his rejection of tradition and decoration is his essay, “Ornament and Crime“?

GL: I agree with his social hierarchy argument.  The Bauhaus and most modern architecture is fascist architecture.  It is dehumanizing.  But creating ornament and decoration for those who can afford to own and display it – that is what artisans are and what they do.  If you want to be something other than that, if you are interested in wealth and economic status, then choose something else.  Artisans, artists, craftspeople…what we work for is respect.  Communities that work, communities that function, respect their artisans.  Frank Lloyd Wright was correct in a lot of ways, and maybe not so in others.  That is not to say I am for excess.  As a matter of fact, personally, I do not like Victorian style ornamentation, which is what we might think of when we think of ornament in the home.

But, nonetheless, ornament is what craftspeople do and what societies are about.  For example, a rich man can pay a craftsman to ornament his home.  Everyone that passes enjoys the decoration, but the rich man least of all.

Art and ornament simultaneously break the rules and have no rules, which is what makes art and politics a bad marriage.  Art is the ultimate criminal act.  No two ways about it.  This is what makes artmaking so thrilling.  Good, bad, or indifferent, it’s what artists do.

This reminds me of a funny design tale.  The Price Chopper logo.  It used to be an axe slashing a coin with George Washington’s head on it, but people raised a big stink because they thought it looked like the axe murder of a female silhouette.  If you notice now, the logo is changed to an axe chopping a circle with only stars in it.

 

Flotsam, 2008

 

RM: Do you have a favorite typeface?

GL: This is going to date me.  I like Bookman Swash and antique faces, especially Uncial.  Big round letters.  I think it’s basically a display face nowadays.  But seeing pages set in faces like that in bibles and church prayerbooks…quite attractive.

 

RM: Do you have a favorite Ben Franklin aphorism?

GL: Yes I do, but it’s escaping me now. Something about the key to riches is to either accrue wealth or manage desire.  I will go find it when we’re done.  I did a collaborative project with a friend of mine, Dale Hobson, who set the type digitally, then created a plate.  I designed a border that was silkscreened around it…

 

 

“There are two ways of being happy:  We may either diminish our wants or augment our means – either will do – the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest.

If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means.

If you are active and prosperous or young and in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants.

But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.”

 

RM: Describe some of the seasonal changes that occur to your prints and equipment that you must contend with.

GL: Moisture and temperature are the two crucial factors in printmaking.  The more you can control your environment, the better.  Ideal conditions are about 11% humidity and at least 60 degrees.  Of course, this isn’t always possible, you take what you can get.  I’ve printed in a barn before!

 

RM: Give me a piece of advice, or a crazy recommendation.

GL: Some interesting ideas might be to explore water or soy based inks in the Eastern Tradition.  Maybe mixing egg and food color and printing on flatbreads like pita or lavash.

In terms of technical advice for an experimental study with unique materials…clean clean clean!  It’s tedious, but if you’re not using traditional materials, take good care of your press.  But be careful with cleaning oils and agents.  I like the citrus ones.  They take longer, but are less abrasive.  Before people were so careful about exposure to toxic and corrosive substances, printers all died when they were about fifty. Mineral spirits, lacquer thinner, even worse things that would take skin off a rhino.  It would get your press clean in no time, though.

 

RM: What’s next for you?

GL: I am quite interested in printing actual stumps and seeing the true wood grain manifest in the print.  The stumps would serve as both pedestal and display piece.

 

RM: What is your favorite piece you have created?

GL: This is called The Poachers - this is, in my opinion, a “Signature Piece”.

 

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Thank you to Greg Lago for the wisdom and camaraderie. Come summer, I hope to trek north and pay a visit!