From Webster's Unabridged: print.mak.er: (print/ma/kar), n. a person who makes prints, esp. an artist working in one of the graphic mediums, esp. as practiced in engraving, etching, drypoint, woodcut, serigraphy, lithography, etc.

Printmaker's Unabridged: any of us poor souls who actually believe we can control the outcome of making a print, esp. drawn on a litho stone, dug into a wood cut, scratched onto an etching plate or made with marks on a Plexiglas plate by dancing on it with tap shoes in the courtyard, etc.

At the corner of Beretania and Victoria streets, the sign on the door of the Academy Art Center reads "Honolulu Printmakers." What goes on behind that door is a combination of alchemy, prayer, expertise and blind luck.

Hawai'i has what may be the oldest, continuously active printmaking organization in the United States, celebrating its 81st year with its annual juried exhibition. Before finding a home in the gracious Linekona building, the print shop was anywhere a printmaker could find a table and a press. For a time the shop was in a dilapidated old gas station.

It has been said that Honolulu has more printmakers per square mile or per capita than any other city. Fulfilling any artist's dream, lush foliage, tropical vistas and beautiful people are a given. But printmaking requires litho stones, large presses, inks, papers and chemicals — a bit more complicated than tossing a knapsack over the shoulder and heading out to paint almost anywhere.

Why make prints? Laura Smith, executive director of the Honolulu Printmakers, might pause her intricate carving of a wood block and suggest with a smile that "creating the Sistine Chapel might be easier than this incredibly difficult, ridiculously complicated, time-consuming, frustrating and sometimes fruitless method of making art — to which all printmakers are totally and everlastingly addicted."

Ask her why, and she again answers with a wry smile, "It's very seductive. Agony and ecstasy. It is a means to create and communicate an image that has no equal in paint or pencil or photograph."

For 81 years, printmakers have recorded the climate of the Islands. In the early years, 1928 to 1934, John Melville Kelly's etchings gave the world an image of the sylph-like, alluring Polynesian woman. Kelly, a founding member of the organization, was one of the first artists to create the now-traditional Honolulu Printmakers gift print. Over the years, savvy collectors may have purchased a Jean Charlot, Charles Bartlett, Madge Tenant or Juliette May Fraser print.

Each year, Honolulu Printmakers selects one member to create the limited-edition gift print, to be unveiled and made available for sale at the show. The 2009 gift print artist, Maile Yawata, speaks fluent painting, ceramic sculpture, drawing and, of course, printmaking. She describes her work as narrative and portraiture. "Faces are the most interesting part," she says. "I can tell a whole story with a face."

Not yet unveiled, her gift print is a five-color lithograph. An insider tip — one element of the print is O'ahu's Pali: "I remember as a kid going up to the lookout and it was a really big deal!" She says it was very scary on the narrow, two-lane road with boulders and rocks likely to fall along the way.

Who gets to pick? The guest juror for the 2009 exhibition had never been to Hawai'i. Michael Krueger, an associate professor of art at the University of Kansas, was born in Wisconsin and raised in South Dakota.

His list of one-man shows is lengthy. He has traveled to Paraguay, England, Scotland and Europe. Last week he left the icy-cold of the Midwest and arrived on a tropical island to face a gallery full of hundreds of prints and printmakers, each waiting for a decision — in or out.

Krueger's history in art began with a family in photography. He describes his father as a bit of a "hippie artist" and his childhood home as having giant fiberglass earthworm sculptures on the walls. "It seemed normal to me," he says with dry, Midwest humor.

Photography in college wasn't fulfilling his artistic needs: "One day a graduate student grabbed me by the arm and said, 'You need to be a printmaker,' so I am."

Using his own high school notebooks, filled with the heavy-metal images of youth and the '80s, Krueger looks at history — his own, his father's and what is becoming history as he creates the art. His prints are digital, cut, folded, re-assembled, youthful moments that the viewer may share. After he makes the selections for the annual exhibition, he will hang his work on the juror's wall at Linekona.

Free Lecture Today

81st annual Exhibition