Mastering the Art of Printmaking

Artists often translate their personal experiences into art, and that’s what printmaker Janet Flohr did after her beloved mother died from Alzheimer’s in 2002. The result is a series of original prints about her mother’s life and death that are currently on view at the McNay Art Museum under the title Learning to Say Goodbye.“

I took care of my mother for as long as I could,” explains Flohr. ”She was able to function for quite some time, but the disease became very debilitating toward the end. One of the aspects of the disease in her case was that she couldn’t absorb the nutrition from her food, so she got thinner and thinner and died just skin and bones. I felt a sense of responsibility that as her only child, I couldn’t ease her suffering. When she died, I was angry with God. I started working on a print about her death to work through my feelings. I needed to transform the experience as much as I could.”

That first print, titled Death Revived, shows the dying woman lying on a bed surrounded by family members, with weird electrodes emanating from her head. Other images show her in various life situations, such as fishing or reading, but always with a surrealistic twist to allude to her mind-distorting illness. The last image in the series, Behold the Bridegroom Cometh, features the mother figure rejoicing in the presence of Jesus.

None of the figures is a realistic representation, however. Flohr deliberately used an elaborate, time-consuming process to create her artwork. She first built each scene using a small calavera to stand for her mother and other Mexican folk art figurines for family members, arranging them with various props on a “stage” like in a diorama. Next, she photographed the scenes and color-separated the photos into magenta, yellow, blue and black images. 

To transfer the design onto an aqua-tinted and etched copper plate for printing, the artist followed a number of precise steps, including a laborious burnishing of the plate to ultimately create the lighter and darker fields she wanted. In the final round, each plate-paper combo was put through the press four times, each time with the different color-separated transparency sandwiched between the plate and the paper. The resulting deep-colored images, taken together, convey a sense of an odd but affecting folk tale.

“I started working on these almost immediately after my mother’s death and then worked off and on for eight years. It was tremendously healing,” says Flohr. Still, she felt that the story wasn’t quite finished so she produced a short animated video that is also part of Learning to Say Goodbye. With that, the artist felt that she had finally given her mama the “good death” she so wanted to give her.

In her art, Flohr has always drawn inspiration from family life and relationships. Earlier series dealt with the empty nest syndrome, a daughter’s marriage, her husband’s career setback, a son moving far away, etc. Over the years, she has shown her work in many juried and invitational exhibits here and across the United States,  but she doesn’t have a gallery representation. “I am not prolific enough for that,” she notes with a little shrug. The McNay show is “a very big deal,” as it is her first solo exhibit in a museum.

The discipline of printmaking
One reason she may not be “prolific enough” lies in her chosen medium. By its very nature printmaking is a process that requires persistence, time and technical skills in addition to artistic vision. Another reason is that she is also running a printing business that she started in 1993 with partner Gary Nichols. Named the Hare and Hound Press, it has become a highly respected venue, where artists can work with knowledgeable printers to produce fine art prints.

Devoted as she is to printmaking, Flohr did not discover her artistic niche until fairly late in life. Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to an American father and Scottish-born mother, at 14 young Janet was sent to boarding school in the United States. She later started college at Trinity, but married a year later, had two sons and “moved around the country” with her husband. 

When that first marriage fell apart, Flohr returned to San Antonio, eventually met her present husband, Bruce Flohr, and had two more children. “I was in the child-rearing business for a long time,” she says. Today both spouses are art advocates and supporters. She is on the board of ArtPace and is also the current board chairwoman at the Southwest School of Art & Craft. He co-founded theFund (for workplace giving to the arts).

For years, Flohr tried to paint on her own but felt frustrated because “a painting has too few boundaries.” To hear her tell it, she would get carried away with paints and brushes to the point of overkill. She so disliked her “overdone” paintings that she eventually destroyed most of them.  Then the struggling artist took an etching class at the old San Antonio Art Institute and experienced the proverbial “aha!” moment. “It was exactly what I needed,” she notes. “You couldn’t rush it because the technical processes took the time that they took. I loved everything about it. It was so much more disciplined than painting. You had to plan each step carefully.” Before long, she enrolled in UTSA’s fine arts program, earning both a B.F.A and an M.F.A. in printmaking.

Her training included assisting other artists with their printing needs, which was both a challenge and a stimulating collegial interaction. Finding herself working alone after graduation, Flohr had another “aha!” moment. Why not start a fine art printing service? Today, the Hare and Hound Press is a contract printing facility that can produce just about every type of print, from etchings and lithographs to large digitals. 

All hand-pulled prints are considered “multiple originals,” says the master printer; they are not reproductions of existing artwork. Editions tend to be small, from fewer than 10 copies to about 50 or 60. And each item comes with documentation specifying what kind of paper and ink was used, the method of printing and the signatures of both artist and printer.

The list of artists who have used Hare and Hound reads like a Who’s Who in San Antonio visual arts and beyond. The former group includes Kent Rush, Vincent Valdez, Cesar Martinez, Trish Simonite, Lloyd Walsh, Andrea Caillouet, Chuck Ramirez and Jesse Amado. Among the latter are names such as Lordy Rodriguez (San Francisco), Robyn O’Neill (Houston), Jeremy Deller (London), Christian Tomaszewski and Wangechi Mutu (New York) and others, all of whom discovered Hare and Hound while they were residents at ArtPace. There are relatively few presses that offer as broad a spectrum of techniques as Flohr and Nichols do, so these artists have continued to use them.

“Work that we’ve produced here in our funky little studio is now in places like the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art (both in New York) and in European collections,” says Flohr.