lynne allen (usa)

1. tell us about your everyday environment,
your hobbies and lifestyle

2. what do you see as the point of your works?

3. tell us your thoughts on the problems printmaking is facing today ? what might they be and where's the solution?

4. do you use computers in your work,
and if so, how do they help you and what do you think of them?

5. what do you think are the best and worst sides of print art?

6. what does printmaking give and mean to you?

7. where did you get the idea from to take part
in the tallinn print triennial?

8. your favourite artists?

1. i live an hour from new york city, but in the countryside,
so it is green and beautiful. my lifestyle is very busy, being a professor, director of a print atelier, a family, and making my own art. hobbies? who has time? as an artist, those little things i used to like to do i don't seem to have time for, except reading. i always find time for that.

2. the focus of my artwork for the last four or five years has been about the cultural dispossession of the native american indian. i can trace back 6 generations on my mothers side, all sioux indians from the standing rock reservation in south dakota. i can't do that on my father's side. i only can go back to his parents, and know vague stories about where they originally came from (england). so you can see my mother and grandmother were very good at keeping the heritage and memories of their sioux life. the work touches on the governments policy of shipping young indians to boarding schools far from their homes in order to 'kill the savage, save the man.' my great grandmother and my grandmother were both shipped to boarding schools when they were 8 and returned home when they were 18. it was, as stated in the title of a book i once read, 'education for extinction.' although the school outcome was not always bad, there is the inevitable element of becoming disassociated with ones own culture. even though this i focus on the native american, the same idea can also be compared to many other areas of the world today where indigenous peoples are over-run, whether physically or economically, and these issues are what drive my work in general. somehow society always has a knack for oppressing someone, and
i don't like it very much.

3. the only problem printmaking has from my point of view, is the same problem any other art medium has, and that is marketability. printmaking itself doesn't have any problems, the health and vitality and accessibility of prints lie in the people who make them. constant education of the public is essential, so they understand exactly what a print is (not a reproduction).

4. i use computers as a tool, especially to scan images and manipulate them, and for certain things which need text. i then put these photographically on etching plates, litho plates or silkscreen. i think computers are a wonderful tool. i personally prefer the print from a traditional printmaking matrix, it has more depth and visual texture. in most cases i find prints printed on normal printers to appear quite flat, which doesn't suit my eye, except perhaps for the iris printer. i did an iris print and you would be hard pressed to know how it was done. it is beautiful. but unfortunately they are very expensive!

5. i can't say what are the best and worst sides of print art.
it is like a marriage, it is what it is, and we love it all the same.

6. prints give me flexibility, because they don't have to be
2-dimensional, they don't have to be in an edition, they don't have to be anything other than what the medium is capable of doing. this allows for many combinations and mixing of mediums and ideas, which i find is very useful in today's contemporary art scene, where most artists (not just print artists) are working this way. i also respond to the physicality and the feel of the materials, and also the ease with which i can make prints. maybe other artists feel the same way about their work, if they are painters or sculptors, or whatever, when you know a medium so well there is a certain comfort level, which makes working very, very rewarding. i also like the fact that printmaking is a world-wide community. i meet artists and friends all over the world, who know other people i know, and this gives me a sense of the power of prints and print artists.

7. the tallinn print triennial is very prestigious, and to be included is a validation of ones works. i also have been to estonia several times, and have wonderful feelings for so many people there. (hi to vive tolli! and all other friends!)

8. daumier and goya (i like all those social comments!), tapies, martin puryear, william kentridge (i am a huge fan), leslie dill (she is very, very smart and sensitive), and mimo paladino,
(not sure i spelled that correctly). of course there are probably more i like, but these come to mind right away. it's enough. these people consistently make good work.