Earlier this year, Art Professor Scott Schnepf delivered the College’s annual Lindberg Lecture to the community. His talk focused on the medium and process of printmaking. The full text of that lecture is now available online along with photographs of Schnepf’s work. The lecture provides a personal and fascinating glimpse into the creative process.
The Lecture: Making Prints
Not often does one have the opportunity to move step by step with an artist through the process of creating a work. But this is the journey of Schnepf’s lecture. After clarifying what printmaking is and is not (it is a direct extension of painting and drawing, and a means of producing unique and original images; it is not the mass reproduction of images created in other mediums, as is commonly thought), Schnepf explores the development of one of his recent print projects.
Inspired by a series of sixteenth-century frescoes by the Italian painter Pontormo, Schnepf embarked on a series of prints—still lifes that would incorporate Pontormo’s scenes of the passion of Christ.
“I was thinking of the still life as an offering or a shrine placed in front of the fresco, both revealing and obscuring the painting. I also was looking to dissolve, to some degree, the boundaries between the still life and the fresco,” says Schnepf.
Over 20 photographs of Schnepf’s work illustrate the stages he undertook to create the final prints, from the initial sketches to the creation of individual plates to the multiple alterations made to the three-plate proofs. Schnepf is frank in discussing both the problems and intrigues he experienced. Along with the final prints, what emerges in this lecture is an art form that requires great patience, technical skill, trust, creative will, and vision.
The Lindberg Award
The Lindberg Lecture is the culminating event for the recipient of the Lindberg Award, the highest award given in the College. This annual award recognizes one faculty member for excellence as both a scholar and teacher, and carries a $5,000 stipend.
Since joining the UNH faculty in 1981, Schnepf has distinguished himself through his mastery of his primary medium, printmaking, as well as in drawing and painting. He regularly exhibits at museums across the country. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress and in collections closer to home, such as the Portland Museum of Art (Portland, Maine) and the Currier Museum of Art (Manchester, New Hampshire).
Schnepf is also an exemplary teacher. Students praise him for his patience, technical expertise, critical eye, and his wise and caring counsel. He has shaped generations of artists as they have developed and moved into the professional sphere.
—Susan Dumais
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