11.19.2008

Pratt Fine Art Center Open House


On Saturday I attended the open house for Pratt Fine Arts Center. Mostly prompted by my cousin who works there I finally went and checked the place out. Pratt is an incredible resource to the artistic community of Seattle as they offer not only classes and workshops, but studio equipment access as well. They host a wide variety of disciplines from glass blowing to printing presses to metal casting.

For the open house they had just about every teacher giving demos - the most showy and exciting of which was the bronze pour: 20 hours of prep for less than 20 minutes of pour. Hence the very large crowd for the show!
They also had a kid activity room where Seattle's future artists could make their own print. All you need is some spare Styrofoam to carve into with a pencil tip and some paint. Fun!
My favorite however was the printmaking studio which included letterpress, silk screening and mono print demos. I came back and watched the mono print teacher twice just to see how her print was progressing. And not only that but every time she sent her paper through the press - cranking the wheel gently and smoothing the blanket as it was pulled under the rollers my heart just ached to be doing my own printing.

Good thing then that Pratt offers artist studio access ...

1 comment:

Emma said...

Oh Pratt! We miss it. wanted to take some of the copper enameling stuff they were starting up, but hopefully I'll be able to find a place here to do that. All the facilities at Pratt were really nice though. the Jewelry classes woulda been fun...okay, so there's pretty much nothing I wouldn't be willing to take there! :P Also, Chuck & I were pretty intrigued by the print studio too during one open house.